I am delighted, Pompeius. This year's campaigning by you and you alone has broken Sertorius's back. Perhaps the victories in the field were mine, but the determination has been all yours. At no time did you give up, at no time did you allow Sertorius the room to breathe. And always it was you Sertorius himself attacked, whereas I had the luck to face first Hirtuleius a good man, but not in Sertorius's class and then Perperna a pure mediocrity. However, I would like to commend the soldiers of our legions. This has been the most thankless and bitter of all Rome's wars, and our men have had to endure hideous hardships. Yet neither of us has experienced discontent or mutiny, though the pay has been years late and the booty nonexistent. We have sacked cities to scrabble like rats for the last grain of wheat. Yes, two wonderful armies, Gnaeus Pompeius, and I wish I was confident that Rome will reward them as they ought to be rewarded. But I am not. Rome cannot be defeated. Battles she may lose, wars she does not. Perhaps our gallant troops are the reason for that, if one takes their loyalty, their good behavior and their absolute determination to grind on into account. We generals and governors can only do so much; in the end, I believe the credit must go to Rome's soldiers. I do not know when you plan to go home. It may be, I suppose, that as the Senate gave you your special command, the Senate will take it away. For myself, I am the Senate's governor in the Further province, and in no hurry to return home. It is easier for the Senate at the moment to prorogue me if I request it than to find Further Spain a new governor. So I will request that I be prorogued for at least two more years. Before I leave I would like to set my province on its feet properly, and make it safe from the Lusitani. I do not look forward upon my eventual return to Rome to engaging in a fresh conflict a clash with the Senate to procure lands on which to settle my veterans. Yet I refuse to see my men go unrewarded. Therefore what I plan to do is to settle my men in Italian Gaul, but on the far side of the Padus, where there are tremendous expanses of good tilling soil and rich pastures at present in the hands of Gauls. It is not Roman land per se so the Senate will not be interested, and I will back my veterans against a pack of Insubres any day. I have already discussed this with my centurions, who profess themselves well pleased. My soldiers will not have to mill about aimlessly for up to several years waiting for a committee of land commissioners and bureaucrats to survey and chat and cull lists and chat and apportion and chat, and end in accomplishing nothing. The more I see of committees, the more convinced I am that the only thing a committee can organize is a catastrophe. I wish you well, dear Magnus.
Pompey wintered that year among the Vascones, a powerful tribe which occupied the western end of the Pyrenees, and whose men were now thoroughly disenchanted with Sertorius. Because they were good to his soldiers, Pompey kept his army busy in building a stronghold for them, having elicited an oath from them to the effect that Pompaelo (as he called this new focus for a town) would always remain loyal to the Senate and People of Rome.
That winter was a bitter one for Quintus Sertorius. Perhaps he had always known that his was a lost cause; certainly he knew he had never been one of Fortune's favorites. But he could not consciously admit these facts to himself in so many words. Instead he told himself that things had gone all his way as long as he had managed to delude his Roman adversaries that they could win against him in the field. His downfall had arrived when the old woman and the kid saw through the ploy and adopted a policy of trying to avoid battle. Fabian strategy. The offer of a reward for betrayal had cut him to the heart, for Quintus Sertorius was a Roman, and understood the cupidity which lived somewhere inside the most reasonable and decent of men. He could no longer trust any of his Roman or Italian confederates, brought up in the same traditions as he, whereas his Spanish people were as yet innocent of that particular fault civilization brought along with it. Always alert now for a hand stealing toward a knife or a certain look on a face, his temper began to shred under the strain. Aware that this new behavior must seem peculiar and atypical to his Spaniards, he strove mightily to control his moods; and in order to control them, he began to use wine as a pacifier. Then cruelest blow of his life word came from Nersae that his mother was dead. The ultimate betrayal. Not if the bloodied bodies of his German wife and the son he had deliberately excluded from a Roman education had been laid at his feet would he have mourned as he mourned for his mother, Maria. For days he shut himself in his darkened room, only Diana the white fawn and an endless number of wine flagons for company. The years of absence, the loss! The loss! The guilt. When he finally emerged a strange iron had entered into him. Hitherto the epitome of courtesy and kindness, he now revealed a Sertorius who was surly and suspicious even of his Spaniards, and quick to insult even his closest friends. Physically could he seem to feel Pompey prising apart the hold he had kept on Spain as Pompey pursued his policy of attrition with smooth efficiency, physically could he seem to feel his world disintegrating. And then, fed by the insidious phantoms in his wine, the paranoia in him erupted. When he heard that some of his Spanish chieftains were surreptitiously removing their sons from his famous school in Osca, he descended with his bodyguards upon its light filled and peaceful colonnades and killed many of the children who remained. It was the beginning of his end. Marcus Perperna Veiento had never forgotten or forgiven the way Sertorius had wrested control of his army from him, nor could he cope with the natural superiority in this Marian renegade from the Sabine mountains. Every time they fought a battle it was brought home to Perperna anew that he had neither the talent nor the devotion of his soldiers that Sertorius possessed in such abundance. Oh, but it came hard to admit that he could not surpass Sertorius in anything! Except, as it turned out, in treachery. From the moment he learned of the reward being offered by Metellus Pius, his course was set. That Sertorius would make it so easy for him by lashing out in all directions was a piece of luck he hadn't counted on, but seized nonetheless. Perperna threw a feast to relieve the monotony of life in wintry Osca, he explained lightly, inviting his Roman and Italian cronies. And inviting Sertorius, of course. He wasn't sure Sertorius would come until he actually saw that familiar bulk and divided face come through his door, but then he rushed forward and eagerly ushered his principal guest to the locus consularis upon his own couch, and made sure his slaves plied the man with undiluted fortified wine. Everyone present was a party to the plot; the atmosphere crackled with emotions. Chiefly fear, apprehension. So the wine flowed unwatered down every throat until Perperna began to think that no one would remain sober enough to do the deed. The little white fawn had come with its master, of course he never stirred without it these days and settled itself on the couch between him and Perperna, an affront which angered Perperna with a peculiar intensity considering the real purpose of the gathering. So as soon as he could he removed himself from the lectus medius, thrust the part Roman, part Spanish Marcus Antonius down in his place. A low fellow got on some peasant by one of the great Antonii, he had never been acknowledged by his father, let alone been showered with the usual openhanded Antonian generosity. The conversation grew coarser, the roistering more vulgar, with Antonius at its forefront. Sertorius, who detested obscene language and jokes, took no part in the banter. He cuddled Diana and drank, the readable side of his face aloof, withdrawn. Then one of the others made a particularly crude remark which appealed to everybody except Sertorius, who threw himself backward on the couch with a grimace of disgust. Fearing that he would get up and leave, Perperna in a panic gave the signal, though the noise was so uproarious he didn't know whether it would be heard. Down onto the floor he threw his silver goblet, so hard that it gave forth a ringing clatter and bounced high into the air. Absolute silence fell immediately. But Antonius was quicker by far than the unsuspecting, wine soaked Sertorius; he drew a Roman legionary's big dagger from under his tunic, hurled himself upon Sertorius and stabbed him in the chest. Diana squealed and scrabbled away, Sertorius began to struggle upright. All the company surged forward to pin the stricken man down by arms and legs, while Antonius plied his dagger up and down, up and down. Sertorius had made no outcry, but had he cried out no one would have come to help him; his Spanish bodyguards waiting outside Perperna's door had been murdered earlier in the night. Still squealing, the white fawn jumped up on the couch as the assassins drew back, satisfied; it began to nose frantically at its master, covered in blood, perfectly still. Now this was a task Perperna felt himself qualified to do! Seizing the knife Marcus Antonius had dropped, he plunged it into Diana's left side just behind the foreleg. The white fawn collapsed in a tangle athwart the dead Sertorius, and when the jubilant party picked him up to throw him out the door of Perperna's house like a piece of unwanted furniture, they pitched Diana after him.
Pompey heard the news in what, he decided afterward, was actually a predictable way, though at the time it struck him as noisome, disgusting. For Marcus Perperna Veiento sent him Sertorius's head as fast as a horse and rider could gallop from Osca to Pompaelo. With the gruesome trophy came a note which informed Pompey that he and Metellus Pius owed Perperna one hundred talents of gold and twenty thousand iugera of land. A second letter to the same effect had been dispatched to Metellus Pius, Perperna said. Pompey replied on his own behalf, and sent a courier in a hurry to Metellus Pius bearing a copy:
It brings me no joy to learn that Quintus Sertorius died at the hands of a worm like you, Perperna. He was sacer, but he deserved a better fate at nobler hands. I take great pleasure in denying you the reward, which was not offered for a head. It was offered to anyone willing to lay information leading to our apprehending or killing Quintus Sertorius. If the copy of our reward poster you happened to see did not specify the laying of information, then blame the scribe. But I certainly did not see any poster neglecting to say the laying of information. You, Perperna, come from a consular family, belonged to the Senate of Rome and were a praetor. You ought to have known better. As I presume you will succeed Quintus Sertorius in the command, it gives me great pleasure to lay information with you that the war will go on until the last traitor is dead and the last insurgent has been sold into slavery.
When Spain learned of the death of Quintus Sertorius, his Spanish adherents vanished into Lusitania and Aquitania; even some of his Roman and Italian soldiers deserted Perperna's cause. Undeterred, Perperna marshaled all those who had elected to remain and in May ventured out of Osca to give battle to Pompey, whose curt reply to his petition for the reward had angered him greatly. Who did the Picentine upstart think he was, to answer on behalf of a Caecilius Metellus? Though the Caecilius Metellus had not answered at all. The battle was no contest. Perperna stumbled upon one of Pompey's legions foraging in the country south of Pompaelo; its men were scattered, and hampered too by several dozen oxcarts. Seeing the last army of Sertorius bearing down on them, Pompey's men fled into the confines of a steep gulch. Perperna, elated, followed them. Only when every last man was inside the gulch did Pompey spring his trap; down from its sides thousands of his soldiers leaped out of concealment, and massacred the last army of Quintus Sertorius. Some soldiers found Perperna hiding in a thicket and brought him to Aulus Gabinius, who at once brought him to Pompey. Grey with terror, Perperna tried to bargain for his life by offering Pompey all of Quintus Sertorius's private papers which, he whimpered, would confirm the fact that there were many important men in Rome who were anxious to see Sertorius win, reconstruct Rome on Marian principles. "Whatever they might be," said Pompey, face wooden, blue eyes expressionless. What might be?'' asked Perperna, shivering. "Marian principles." "Please, Gnaeus Pompeius, I beg of you! Only let me give you these papers, and you'll see for yourself how right I am!" "Very well, give them to me," said Pompey laconically. Looking immensely relieved, Perperna told Aulus Gabinius whereabouts to look for the papers (he had carried them along with him, fearing to leave them in Osca), and waited with scarcely concealed impatience until the detail came back again. Two of the men bore a large chest between them, and put it on the ground at Pompey's feet. "Open it," said Pompey. He squatted down and rustled through the packed scrolls and papers inside for a very long time, occasionally spreading a sheet out to read it, nodding to himself as he muttered. The vaster bulk of what the chest contained he merely glanced at, but some of the shorter papers he also merely glanced at caused him to raise his brows. He stood up when the chest was empty and a huge pile of documents lay higgledy piggledy on the trampled grass. Push all that rubbish together and burn it here and now in front of me," said Pompey to Aulus Gabinius. Perperna gasped, but said nothing. When the contents of the chest were blazing fiercely, Pompey thrust his chin toward Gabinius, a look of profound satisfaction on his face. "Kill this worm," he said. Perperna died under a Roman legionary's sword, and the war in Spain was over in the moment his head rolled and jumped across the blood soaked ground. "So that's that," said Aulus Gabinius. Pompey shrugged. "Good riddance," he said. Both of them had been standing looking down at Perperna's disembodied face, its eyes goggling in horrified surprise; now Pompey turned away and began to walk back to the rest of his legates, who had known better than to intrude themselves when they had not been summoned. "Did you have to burn the papers?" asked Gabinius. "Oh, yes." "Wouldn't it have been better to have brought them back to Rome? Then all the traitors would have been flushed out." Pompey shook his head, laughed. What, keep the Treason Court busy for the next hundred years?" he asked. "Sometimes it is wiser to keep one's own counsel. A traitor does not cease to be a traitor because the papers which would have indicted him have gone up in smoke." "I don't quite understand." "I mean they'll keep, Aulus Gabinius. They'll keep."
Though the war was over, Pompey was too meticulous a man to pack up and march home bearing Perperna's head on a spear. He liked to clean up his messes, which principally meant killing anyone he thought might prove a threat or a danger in the future. Among those who perished were Sertorius's German wife and son, whom Pompey found in Osca when he accepted the capitulation of that frowning fortress in June. The thirty year old man who was pointed out to him as Sertorius's son looked enough like him to make the tale credible, though he spoke no Latin and conducted himself like a Spaniard of the Illergetes. On hearing of Sertorius's death, Clunia and Uxama repented of their submissions to Pompey, shut their gates and prepared to withstand siege. Pompey was happy to oblige them. Clunia fell. Uxama fell. So eventually did Calagurris, where the appalled Romans discovered that the men of the town had eaten their own women and children rather than surrender; Pompey had every living Calagurrian executed, then put not only the town but the entire district to the torch. Of course all through this, communications had flown back and forth between the victorious general and Rome. Not all the letters were official ones, nor all the documents for public dissemination; chief among Pompey's correspondents was Philippus, who was crowing mightily in the Senate. The consuls of the year were two of Pompey's secret clients, Lucius Gellius Poplicola and Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus, which meant that Pompey was able to petition them to secure the Roman citizenship for those Spaniards who had assisted him significantly. At the top of Pompey's list was the same outlandish name, twice written; Kinahu Hadasht Byblos, uncle and nephew, aged thirty three and twenty eight respectively, citizens in good standing of Gades, Punic merchant princes. But they did not assume Pompey's name, for it was no part of Pompey's plan to let loose a flood of Spanish Gnaeus Pompeius This and That upon Rome. The Gadetanian uncle and nephew were put in the clientship of one of Pompey's more recent legates, Lucius Cornelius Lentulus, a cousin of the consul. So they entered into Roman life and annals as Lucius Cornelius Balbus Major and Lucius Cornelius Balbus Minor. Still Pompey refused to hurry. The mines around New Carthage were reopened, the Contestani punished for attacking dear, dead Gaius Memmius: his sister was now a widow. He would have to do something about that when he returned to Rome! Slowly the province of Nearer Spain was carefully pieced together, given a properly organized bureaucracy, a tax structure, succinct rules and laws, and all the other adjuncts necessary to pronounce a place Roman. Then in the autumn Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus bade farewell to Spain, devoutly hoping he would never need to return. He had quite recovered his self confidence and his good opinion of himself, though never again would he face any military adversary without a premonitory shudder, never again would he enter into any war unless he knew he outnumbered the enemy by several legions at least. And never again would he fight another Roman! At the crest of the pass through the Pyrenees the victorious general set up trophies, including armor which had belonged to Quintus Sertorius and the armor in which Perperna had lost his head. They hung sturdily stapled to tall poles with crossarms, pteryges flapping in the mournful mountain wind, a mute reminder to all who crossed from Gaul into Spain that it did not pay to go to war with Rome. Alongside the various trophies Pompey erected a cairn which bore a tablet on which he set forth his name, his title, his commission, the number of towns he had taken and the names of the men who had been rewarded with the Roman citizenship. After which he descended into Narbonese Gaul and spent the winter there feasting on shrimps and dug mullets. Like his war, that year had seen a turn for the better; the harvests were good in both the Spains but bountiful in Narbonese Gaul. He did not plan to reach Rome until the middle of the year at the earliest, though not because he came home feeling any sense of failure. Simply, he didn't know what to do next, where to go next, what pillar of Roman tradition and veneration to tumble. On the twenty eighth day of September he would turn thirty five years old, no longer the fresh faced darling of the legions. Thus it behooved him to find a goal suitable for a man, not a boy. But what goal? Something the Senate would hate to give him, of that there could be no doubt. He could feel the answer lurking in the mazes of that part of his mind he shrank from exploring, but still it eluded him. Then he shrugged, cast all those thoughts away. There were more immediate things to do, such as opening up the new road he had pioneered across the Alps survey it, pave it, make it what? The Via Pompeia? That sounded good! But who wanted to die leaving the name of a road as his monument to glory? No, better to die leaving just the name itself. Pompey the Great. Yes, that said it all.
PART VII from SEPTEMBER 78 B.C. until JUNE 71 B.C.
Caesar had seen no reason to hurry home after he left the service of Publius Servilius Vatia; rather, his journey was a tour of exploration of those parts of Asia Province and Lycia he had not yet visited. However, he was back in Rome by the end of September in the year Lepidus and Catulus were consuls to find Rome acutely apprehensive about the conduct of Lepidus, who had left the city to recruit in Etruria before doing what he was supposed to do hold the curule elections. Civil war was in the air, everyone talked it. But civil war real or imagined was not high on Caesar's list of priorities. He had personal matters to attend to. His mother seemed not to have aged at all, though there had been a change in her; she was very sad. "Because Sulla is dead!" her son accused, a challenge in his voice that went back to the days when he had thought Sulla was her lover. "Yes." "Why? You owed him nothing!" "I owed him your life, Caesar." "Which he put in jeopardy in the first place!" "I am sorry he is dead," said Aurelia flatly. "I am not." "Then let us change the subject." Sighing, Caesar leaned back in his chair, acknowledging himself defeated. Her chin was up, a sure sign that she would not bend no matter what brilliant arguments he used. "It is time I took my wife into my bed, Mater." Aurelia frowned. "She's barely sixteen." Too young for a girl to marry, I agree. But Cinnilla has been married for nine years, and that makes her situation quite different. When she greeted me I could see in her eyes that she is ready to come to my bed." "Yes, I think you're right, my son. Though your grandfather would have said that the union of two patricians is fraught with peril in childbirth. I would have liked to see her just a little more grown up before she dealt with that." "Cinnilla will be fine, Mater." "Then when?" "Tonight." "But there should be some sort of reinforcement of marriage first, Caesar. A family dinner both your sisters are in Rome." "There will be no family dinner. And no fuss." Nor was there. Having been told no fuss, Aurelia didn't mention the coming change in her status to her daughter in law, who, when she went to go to her own little room, found herself detained by Caesar in a suddenly empty triclinium. "It's this way today, Cinnilla," Caesar said, taking her by the hand and leading her toward the master's sleeping cubicle. She went pale. "Oh! But I'm not ready!" For this, no girl ever is. A good reason to get it over and done with. Then we can settle down together comfortably." It had been a good idea to give her no time to spend in thinking about what was to come, though of course she had thought of little else for four long years. He helped her off with her clothes, and because he was incurably neat folded them carefully, enjoying this evidence of feminine occupation of a room that had known no mistress since Aurelia had moved out after his father died. Cinnilla sat on the edge of the bed and watched him do this, but when he began to divest himself of his own clothes she shut her eyes. Done, he sat beside her and took both her hands in his, resting them upon his bare thigh. "Do you know what will happen, Cinnilla?" "Yes," she said, eyes still closed. "Then look at my face." The big dark eyes opened, fixed themselves painfully on his face, which was smiling and, she fancied, full of love. "How pretty you are, wife, and how nicely made." He touched her breasts, full and high, with nipples almost the color of her tawny skin. Her hands came up to caress his, she sighed. Arms about her now, he kissed her, and this she found just wonderful, so long dreamed of, so much better than the dreams. She opened her lips to him, kissed him back, caressed him, found herself lying alongside him on the bed, her body responding with delicious flinches and shivers to this full length contact with his. His skin, she discovered, was quite as silky as her own, and the pleasure it gave her to feel it warmed her to the quick. Though she had known exactly what would happen, imagination was no substitute for reality. For so many years she had loved him, made him the focus of her life, that to be his wife in flesh as well as at law was glorious. Worth the wait, the wait which had become a part of her state of exaltation. In no hurry, he made sure she was absolutely ready for him, and did nothing to her that belonged to more sophisticated realms than the dreams of virgin girls. He hurt her a little, but not nearly enough to spoil her spiraling excitement; to feel him within her was best of all, and she held him within her until some magical and utterly unexpected spasm invaded every part of her. That, no one had told her about. But that, she understood, was what made women want to remain married. When they rose at dawn to eat bread still hot from the oven and water cold from the stone cistern in the light well garden, they found the dining room filled with roses and a flagon of light sweet wine on the sideboard. Tiny dolls of wool and ears of wheat hung from the lamps. Then came Aurelia to kiss them and wish them well, and the servants one by one, and Lucius Decumius and his sons. "How nice it is to be properly married at last!" said Caesar. "I quite agree," said Cinnilla, who looked as beautiful and fulfilled as any bride ought to look after her wedding night. Gaius Matius, last to arrive, found the little celebratory breakfast enormously touching. None knew better than he how many women Caesar had enjoyed; yet this woman was his wife, and how wonderful it was to see that he was not disappointed. For himself, Gaius Matius doubted that he could have gratified a girl of Cinnilla's age after living with her as a sister for nine long years. But evidently Caesar was made of sterner stuff.
It was at the first meeting of the Senate Caesar attended that Philippus succeeded in persuading that body to summon Lepidus back to Rome to hold the curule elections. And at the second meeting he heard Lepidus's curt refusal read out, to be followed by the senatorial decree ordering Catulus back to Rome. But between that meeting and the third one Caesar had a visit from his brother in law, Lucius Cornelius Cinna. "There will be civil war," young Cinna said, "and I want you to be on the winning side." "Winning side?" "Lepidus's side." "He won't win, Lucius. He can't win." "With all of Etruria and Umbria behind him he can't lose!" "That's the sort of thing people have been saying since the beginning of the world. I only know one person who can't lose." "And who might that be?" Cinna demanded, annoyed. "Myself." A statement Cinna saw as exquisitely funny; he rolled about with laughter. "You know," he said when he was able, "you really are an odd fish, Caesar!" "Perhaps I'm not a fish at all. I might be a fowl, which would certainly make an odd looking fish. Or I might be a side of mutton on a hook in a butcher's stall." "I never know when you're joking," said Cinna uncertainly. "That's because I rarely joke." "Rubbish! You weren't serious when you said you were the only man who couldn't lose!" "I was absolutely serious." "You won't join Lepidus?" "Not if he were poised at the gates of Rome, Lucius." "Well, you're wrong. I'm joining him." "I don't blame you. Sulla's Rome beggared you." And off went young Cinna to Saturnia, where Lepidus and his legions lay. Issued this time by Catulus on behalf of the Senate, the second summons went to Lepidus, and again Lepidus refused to return to Rome. Before Catulus went back to Campania and his own legions, Caesar asked for an interview. "What do you want?" asked the son of Catulus Caesar coldly; he had never liked this too beautiful, too gifted young man. "I want to join your staff in case there's war." "I won't have you on my staff." Caesar's eyes changed, assumed the deadly look Sulla's used to get. "You don't have to like me, Quintus Lutatius, to use me." "How would I use you? Or to put it better, what use would you be to me? I hear you've already applied to join Lepidus." "That's a lie!" "Not from what I hear. Young Cinna went to see you before he left Rome and the two of you fixed it all up." "Young Cinna came to wish me well, as is the duty of a brother in law after his sister's marriage has been consummated." Catulus turned his back. "You may have convinced Sulla of your loyalty, Caesar, but you'll never convince me that you're anything other than a troublemaker. I won't have you because I won't have any man on my staff whose loyalty is suspect." "When and if! Lepidus marches, cousin, I will fight for Rome. If not as a member of your staff, then in some other capacity. I am a patrician Roman of the same blood family as you, and nobody's client or adherent." Halfway to the door, Caesar paused. "You would do well to file me in your mind as a man who will always abide by Rome's constitution. I will be consul in my year but not because a loser like Lepidus has made himself Dictator of Rome. Lepidus doesn't have the courage or the steel, Catulus. Nor, I might add, do you." Thus it was that Caesar remained in Rome while events ran at an ever accelerating rate toward rebellion. The senatus consultum de re publica defendenda was passed, Flaccus Princeps Senatus died, the second interrex held elections, and finally Lepidus marched on Rome. Together with several thousand others of station high and low and in between, Caesar presented himself in full armor to Catulus on the Campus Martius; he was sent as a part of a group of several hundred to garrison the Wooden Bridge from Transtiberim into the city. Because Catulus would sanction no kind of command for this winner of the Civic Crown, Caesar did duty as a man in the ranks. He saw no action, and when the battle under the Servian Walls of the Quirinal was over, he betook himself home without bothering to volunteer for the chase after Lepidus up the coast of Etruria. Catulus's arrogance and spite were not forgotten. But Gaius Julius Caesar was a patient hater; Catulus's turn would come when the time was right. Until then, Catulus would wait.
Much to Caesar's chagrin, when he had arrived in Rome he found the younger Dolabella already in exile and Gaius Verres strutting around oozing virtue and probity. Verres was now the husband of Metellus Caprarius's daughter and very popular with the knight electors, who thought his giving evidence against the younger Dolabella was a great compliment to the disenjuried Ordo Equester here was a senator who was not afraid to indict one of his fellow senators! However, Caesar let it be known through Lucius Decumius and Gaius Matius that he would act as advocate for anyone in the Subura, and busied himself during the months which saw the downfall of Lepidus and Brutus and the rise of Pompey with a series of court cases humble enough, yet highly successful. His legal reputation grew, connoisseurs of advocacy and rhetoric began to attend whichever court it was he pleaded before mostly the urban or foreign praetor's, but occasionally the Murder Court. Contrive to smear him though Catulus did, people listened to Catulus less and less because they liked what Caesar had to say, not to mention how he said it. When some of the cities of Macedonia and central Greece approached him to prosecute the elder Dolabella (back from his extended governorship because Appius Claudius Pulcher had finally arrived in his province), Caesar consented. This was the first really important trial he had undertaken, for it was to be heard in the quaestio de repetundae the Extortion Court and involved a man of highest family and great political clout. He knew little of the circumstances behind this elder Dolabella's governorship, but proceeded to interview possible witnesses and gather evidence with meticulous care. His ethnarch clients found him a delight; scrupulously considerate of their rank, always pleasant and easy to get on with. Most amazing of all did they find his memory what he had heard he never forgot, and would often seize upon some tiny, inadvertent statement which turned out to be far more important than anyone had realized. "However," he said to his clients on the morning that the trial opened, be warned. The jury is composed entirely of senators, and senatorial sympathies are very much on Dolabella's side. He's seen as a good governor because he managed to keep the Scordisci at bay. I don't think we can win." They didn't win. Though the evidence was so strong only a senatorial jury hearing the case of a fellow senator could have ignored it Caesar's oratory was superb the verdict was ABSOLVO. Caesar didn't apologize to his clients, nor were they disappointed in his performance. Both the forensic presentation and Caesar's speeches were hailed as the best in at least a generation, and men flocked to ask him to publish his speeches. They will become textbooks for students of rhetoric and the law," said Marcus Tullius Cicero, asking for copies for himself. "You shouldn't have lost, of course, but I'm very glad I got back from abroad in time to hear you best Hortensius and Gaius Cotta." "I'm very glad too, Cicero. It's one thing to be gushed over by Cethegus, quite another to be asked crisply by an advocate of your standing for copies of my work," said Caesar, who was indeed pleased that Cicero should ask. "You can teach me nothing about oratory," said Cicero, quite unconsciously beginning to demolish his compliment, "but rest assured, Caesar, that I shall study the way you investigated your case and presented your evidence very closely." They strolled up the Forum together, Cicero still talking. "What fascinates me is how you've managed to project your voice. In normal conversation it's so deep! Yet when you speak to a crowd you pitch it high and clear, and it carries splendidly. Who taught you that?'' "No one," said Caesar, looking surprised. "I just noticed that men with deep voices were harder by far to hear than men with higher voices. So since I like to be heard, I turned myself into a tenor." "Apollonius Molon I've been studying with him for the last two years says it all depends on the length of a man's neck what sort of voice he has. The longer the neck, the deeper the voice. And you do have a long, scraggy neck! Luckily," he added complacently, "my neck is exactly the right length." "Short," said Caesar, eyes dancing. "Medium," said Cicero firmly. "You look well, and you've put on some much needed weight." "I am well. And itching to be back in the courts. Though," said Cicero thoughtfully, "I do not think I will match my skills against yours. Some titans should never clash. I fancy the likes of Hortensius and Gaius Cotta too." "I expected better of them," said Caesar. "If the jury hadn't made up its mind before the trial began instead of paying attention to my case, they would have lost, you know. They were sloppy and clumsy." "I agree. Gaius Cotta is your uncle, is he not?" "Yes. Not that it matters. He and I enjoy a clash." They stopped to buy a pasty from a vendor who had been selling his famous savory snacks for years outside the State House of the flamen Dialis. "I believe," said Cicero, wolfing his pasty down (he liked his food), "that there is still considerable legal doubt about your erstwhile flaminate. Aren't you tempted to use it and move into that commodious and very nice house behind Gavius's stall there? I understand you live in an apartment in the Subura. Not the right address for an advocate with your style, Caesar!" Caesar shuddered, threw the remainder of his turnover in the direction of a begging bird. Not if I lived in the meanest hovel on the Esquiline, Cicero, would I be tempted!" he declared. "Well, I must say I'm glad to be on the Palatine these days," Cicero said, starting on his second pasty. "My brother, Quintus, has the old family house on the Carinae," he said grandly, just as if his family had owned it for generations rather than bought it when he had been a boy. He thought of something, and giggled. "Speaking of acquittals and the like, you heard what Quintus Calidius said after a jury of his peers convicted him in the Extortion Court, didn't you?" "I'm afraid I missed it. Do enlighten me." "He said he wasn't surprised he lost, because the going rate to bribe a jury in these days of Sulla's all senatorial courts is three hundred thousand sesterces, and he just couldn't lay his hands on that kind of cash." Caesar saw the funny side too, and laughed. "Then I must remember to stay out of the Extortion Court!" "Especially when Lentulus Sura is foreman of the jury." As Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura had been the foreman of the elder Dolabella's jury, Caesar's brows rose. "That is handy to know, Cicero!" "My dear fellow, there is absolutely nothing I can't tell you about our law courts!" said Cicero, waving one hand in a magnificent gesture. "If you have any questions, just ask me." "I will, be sure of it," said Caesar. He shook hands with Cicero and walked off in the direction of the despised Subura. Quintus Hortensius ducked out from behind a convenient column to join Cicero while he was still watching Caesar's tall form diminishing in the distance. "He was very good," said Hortensius. "Give him a few more years of experience, my dear Cicero, and you and I will have to look to our laurels." "Give him an honest jury, my dear Hortensius, and your laurels would have been off your head this morning." "Unkind!" "It won't last, you know." "What?" "Juries composed entirely of senators." "Nonsense! The Senate is back in control forever." "That is nonsense. There's a swell in the community to have their powers restored to the tribunes of the plebs. And when they have their old powers back, Quintus Hortensius, the juries will be made up of knights again." Hortensius shrugged. "It makes no difference to me, Cicero. Senators or knights, a bribe is a bribe when necessary." "I do not bribe my juries," said Cicero stiffly. "I know you don't. Nor does he." Hortensius flapped his hand in the direction of the Subura. "But it's an accepted custom, my dear fellow, an accepted custom!" "A custom which can afford an advocate no satisfaction. When I win a case I like to know I won it on my merits, not on how much money my client gave me to dole out in bribes." "Then you're a fool and you won't last." Cicero's good looking but not classically handsome face went stiff. The brown eyes flashed dangerously. "I'll outlast you, Hortensius! Never doubt it!" "I am too strong to move." "That was what Antaeus said before Hercules lifted him off the ground. Ave, Quintus Hortensius."
At the end of January in the following year, Cinnilla gave birth to Caesar's daughter, Julia, a frost fair and delicate mite who pleased father and mother enormously. "A son is a great expense, dearest wife," said Caesar, "whereas a daughter is a political asset of infinite value when her lineage is patrician on both sides and she has a good dowry. One can never know how a son will turn out, but our Julia is perfect. Like her grandmother Aurelia, she will have her pick of dozens of suitors." "I can't see much prospect for the good dowry," said the mother, who had not had an easy time of it during labor, but was now recovering well. "Don't worry, Cinnilla my lovely! By the time Julia is old enough to marry, the dowry will be there." Aurelia was in her element, having taken charge of the baby and fallen head over heels in love with this grandchild. She had four others by now, Lia's two sons by their different fathers and Ju Ju's daughter and son, but none of them lived in her house. Nor were they the progeny of her son, the light of her life. "She will keep her blue eyes, they're very pale," said Aurelia, delighted baby Julia had thrown to her father's side, "and her hair has no more color than ice." "I'm glad you can see hair," said Caesar gravely. "To me she looks absolutely bald and that, since she's a Caesar and therefore supposed to have a thick head of hair, is not welcome." "Rubbish! Of course she has hair! Wait until she's one year old, my son, and then you'll see that she has a thick head of hair. It will never darken much. She'll be silver rather than gold, the precious little thing." "She looks as homely as poor Gnaea to me." "Caesar, Caesar! She's newborn! And she's going to look very like you." "What a fate," said Caesar, and departed. He proceeded to the city's most prestigious inn, on the corner of the Forum Romanum and the Clivus Orbius; he had received a message that his clients who had commissioned him to prosecute the elder Dolabella were back in Rome, and anxious to see him. "We have another case for you," said the leader of the Greek visitors, Iphicrates of Thessalonica. "I'm flattered," said Caesar, frowning. "But who is there you could be interested in prosecuting? Appius Claudius Pulcher hasn't been governor long enough to bring a case against him, surely, even if you could persuade the Senate to consent to trying a governor still in office." "This is an odd task which has nothing to do with Macedonian governors," said Iphicrates. "We want you to prosecute Gaius Antonius Hybrida for atrocities he committed while he was a prefect of cavalry under Sulla ten years ago." "Ye gods! After all this time, why?" We do not expect to win, Caesar. That is not the object of our mission. Simply, our experiences under the elder of the two Dolabellae has brought home to us forcibly that there are some Romans put over us who are little better than animals. And we think it high time that the city of Rome was made aware of this. Petitions are useless. No one bothers to read them, least of all the Senate. Charges of treason or extortion are rarefied businesses in courts only the upper classes of Rome bother to attend. What we want is to attract the attention of the knights, and even of the lower classes. So we thought of a trial in the Murder Court, a juicy arena all classes attend. And when we cast around for a suitable subject, the name of Gaius Antonius Hybrida leaped to every mind immediately." "What did he do?" Caesar asked. He was the prefect of cavalry in charge of the districts of Thespiae, Eleusis and Orchomenus during the time when Sulla or some of his army lived in Boeotia. But he did very little soldiering. Instead he found delight in terrible pleasures torture, maiming, rape of women and men, boys and girls, murder." "Hybrida?" "Yes, Hybrida." Well, I always knew he was a typical Antonian drunk more than sober, incapable of keeping any money in his purse, avid for women and food in enormous excess." An expression of distaste appeared on Caesar's face. "But torture? Even for an Antonian, that's not usual. I'd believe it quicker of an Ahenobarbus!" "Our evidence is absolutely unassailable, Caesar." "I suppose he must get it from his mother. She wasn't a Roman, though I always heard she was a decent enough woman. An Apulian. But the Apulians are not barbarians, and what you describe is pure barbarism. Even Gaius Verres didn't go so far!" "Our evidence is absolutely unassailable," said Iphicrates again. He looked a little sly. "Now perhaps you understand our plight: who in Rome's highest circles will believe us unless all of Rome is talking, and all of Rome sees our evidence with its own eyes?" "You have victims for witnesses?" "Dozens of them if necessary. People of unimpeachable virtue and standing. Some without eyes, some without ears, some without tongues, some without hands or feet or legs or genitals or wombs or arms or skin or noses or combinations of these. The man was a beast. So were his cronies, though they do not matter, as they were not of the high nobility." Caesar looked sick. "His victims lived, then." "Most of them lived, that is true. Antonius, you see, thought that what he did was an art. And the art lay in inflicting the most pain and dismemberment without death ensuing. Antonius's greatest joy was to ride back into one of his towns months later to see that his victims still lived." "Well, it will be awkward for me, but I will certainly take the case," said Caesar sternly. "Awkward? How, awkward?" "His elder brother, Marcus, is married to my first cousin once removed the daughter of Lucius Caesar, who was consul and later murdered by Gaius Marius. There are three little boys Hybrida's nephews who are my first cousins twice removed. It is not considered good form to prosecute members of one's own family, Iphicrates." "But is the actual relationship one which extends to Gaius Antonius Hybrida? Your cousin is not married to him." "True, and it is for that reason I will take the case. But many will disapprove. The blood does link in Julia's three sons." It was Lucius Decumius he chose to talk to, rather than to Gaius Matius or someone else closer to his rank. "You hear everything, dad. But have you heard of this?" Having been dowered with a physical apparatus incapable of looking older when he was younger and younger when he was older, Lucius Decumius remained ever the same; Caesar was hard put to calculate his age, which he guessed at around sixty. "A bit, not much. His slaves don't last beyond six months, yet you never sees them buried. I always gets suspicious when I never sees them buried. Usually means all sorts of nasty antics." "Nothing is more despicable than cruelty to a slave!" "Well, you'd think so, Caesar. You got the world's best mother, you been brought up right." "It should not have to do with how one is brought up!" said Caesar angrily. "It surely has to do with one's innate nature. I can understand such atrocities when they're perpetrated by barbarians their customs, traditions and gods ask things of them which we Romans outlawed centuries ago. To think of a Roman nobleman one of the Antonii! taking pleasure in inflicting such suffering oh, dad, I find it hard to believe!" But Lucius Decumius merely looked wise. "It's all around you, Caesar, and you knows it is. Maybe not quite so horrible, but that's mostly because people is afraid of getting caught. You just consider for a moment! This Antonius Hybrida, he's a Roman nobleman just like you say. The courts protects him and his own sort protects him. What's he got to be afraid of, once he starts? All what stops most people starting, Caesar, is the fear of getting caught. Getting caught means punishment. And the higher a man is, the further he's got to fall. But just sometimes you finds a man with the clout to be whatever he wants to be who goes ahead and is what he wants to be. Like Antonius Hybrida. Not many like him in any place. Not many! But there's always some, Caesar. Always some." "Yes, you're right. Of course you're right." The eyelids fell tiredly, blocked out Caesar's thoughts. "What you're saying is that such men must be brought to book. Punished." "Unless you wants a lot more of the same. Let one off and two more gets daring." "So I must bring him to book. That won't be easy." "It won't be easy." "Aside from dark rumors of disappearing slaves, what else do you know about him, dad?" "Not much, except that he's hated. Tradesmen hates him. So do ordinary people. When he pinches a sweet little girl as he walks down the street, he pinches too hard, makes her cry." And where does my cousin Julia fit into all this?" "Ask your mother, Caesar, not me!" "I can't ask my mother, Lucius Decumius!" Lucius Decumius thought about that, and nodded. "No, you can't, right enough." He paused to ponder. "Well, that Julia's a silly woman not one of your smarter Julias for sure! Her Antonius is a bit of a lad, if you follows me, but not cruel. Thoughtless. Don't know when to give his boys a good kick up the arse, little beggars." "You mean his boys run wild?" "As a forest boar." Let me see.... Marcus, Gaius, Lucius. Oh, I wish I knew more about family matters! I don't listen to the women talking, is the trouble. My mother could tell me in an instant. ... But she's too clever, dad, she'd want to know why I'm interested, and then she'd try to persuade me not to take the case. After which we'd quarrel. Far better that when she does learn I'm taking the case, it's an accomplished fact." He sighed, looked rueful. "I think I'd better hear more about Hybrida's brother's boys, dad." Lucius Decumius screwed up his eyes, pursed his lips. "I sees them about the Subura shouldn't be scampering in the Subura with no pedagogue or servant, but they does. Steal food from the shops, more to torment than because they wants it." "How old are they?" "Can't tell you exactly, but Marcus looks about twelve in size and acts five in mind, so put him at seven or eight. The other two is littler." "Yes, they're hulking brutes, all the Antonii. I take it the father of these boys hasn't much money." "Always on the edge of disaster, Caesar." "I won't do him or his boys any good if I prosecute, then." "You won't." "I have to take the case, dad." "Well, I knows that!" "What I need are some witnesses. Preferably free men or women or children who are willing to testify. He must be doing it here too. And his victims won't all be vanished slaves." "I'll go looking, Caesar." His womenfolk knew the moment he came in the front door that some trouble had come upon him, but neither Aurelia nor Cinnilla tried to discover its nature. Under more normal circumstances Aurelia certainly would have, but the baby occupied her attention more than she would have cared to admit, so she missed the significance of Caesar's mood. And therefore the chance to talk him out of prosecuting Gaius Antonius Hybrida, whose nephews were Caesar's close cousins.
The Murder Court was the logical venue, but the more Caesar thought about the case the less he liked the idea of a trial in the Murder Court. For one thing, the president was the praetor Marcus Junius Juncus, who resented his allocation to an ex aedile's court, but no ex aediles had volunteered this year; Caesar had already clashed with him during a case he had pleaded in January. The other great difficulty was the un Roman litigants. It was very difficult indeed in any court to get a favorable verdict when the plaintiffs were foreign nationals and the defendant a Roman of high birth and standing. All very well for his clients to say that they didn't mind losing the case, but Caesar knew a judge like Juncus would ensure the proceedings were kept quiet, the court shoved away somewhere designed to discourage a large audience. And the worst of it was that the tribune of the plebs Gnaeus Sicinius was monopolizing Forum audiences by agitating ceaselessly for a full restoration of all the powers which had used to belong to the tribunes of the plebs. Nobody was interested in anything else, especially after Sicinius had come out with a witticism already going down in the collection of every literary dilettante who amassed political witticisms. "Why," the consul Gaius Scribonius Curio had asked him, exasperated, "is it that you harass me and my colleague Gnaeus Octavius, you harass the praetors, the aediles, your fellow tribunes of the plebs, Publius Cethegus, all our consulars and great men, bankers like Titus Atticus, even the poor quaestors! and yet you never say a word against Marcus Licinius Crassus? Isn't Marcus Crassus worthy of your venom? Or is it Marcus Crassus who is putting you up to your antics? Go on, Sicinius, you yapping little dog, tell me why you leave Crassus alone!" Well aware that Curio and Crassus had had a falling out, Sicinius pretended to give the question serious consideration before answering. "Because Marcus Crassus has hay wrapped around both his horns," he said gravely. The very large audience had collapsed on the ground laughing, appreciating every nuance. The sight of an ox with hay wrapped around one horn was common enough; the hay was a warning that the animal might look placid, but it would suddenly gore with the hayed horn. Oxen with hay wrapped around both horns were avoided like lepers. Had Marcus Crassus not possessed the unruffled, bovine look and build of an ox, the remark would not have been so apt; but what made it so hilarious was the inference that Marcus Crassus was such a prick he had two of them. Therefore, how to attract away some of Sicinius's devoted following? How to give the case the audience it deserved? And while Caesar chewed these matters over, his clients journeyed back to Boeotia to gather evidence and witnesses in the exact way Caesar had instructed; the months went on, the clients returned, and still Caesar had not applied to Juncus to hear the case. "I do not understand!" cried Iphicrates, disappointed. "If we do not hurry, we may not be heard at all!" "I have a feeling there's a better way," said Caesar. "Be patient with me a little longer, Iphicrates. I promise I will make sure you and your colleagues don't have to wait in Rome for more months. Your witnesses are well hidden?" Absolutely, just as you ordered. In a villa outside Cumae." And then one day early in June, the answer came. Caesar had paused by the tribunal of the praetor peregrinus, Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus. The younger brother of the man most of Rome deemed her brightest man of the future was very like Lucullus and very devoted to him. Separated as children by the vicissitudes of fortune, the bond had not weakened; rather, it had grown much stronger. Lucullus had delayed his climb up the cursus honorum so that he could be curule aedile in tandem with Varro Lucullus, and together they had thrown games of such brilliance that people still talked about them. It was commonly believed that both the Luculli would achieve the consulship in the near future; they were as popular with the voters as they were aristocratic. "How goes your day?" Caesar asked, smiling; he liked the foreign praetor, in whose court he had pleaded many little cases with a confidence and freedom few other judges engendered. Varro Lucullus was extremely knowledgeable about law, and a man of great integrity. "My day goes boringly," said Varro Lucullus, answering the smile with one of his own. Somehow Caesar's brilliant idea was born and reached full maturity between his question and Varro Lucullus's answer; that was usually what happened, the lightning perception of how to go about some difficult thing after months of puzzling. "When are you leaving Rome to hear the rural assizes?" "It's traditional for the foreign praetor to pop up on the Campanian seaside just as summer reaches its most unendurable pitch," said Varro Lucullus, and sighed. "However, it looks as if I'll be tied down in Rome for at least another month." "Then don't cut it short!" said Caesar. Varro Lucullus blinked; one moment he had been talking to a man whose legal acumen and ability he prized highly, the next moment he was gazing at the space where Caesar had been. "I know how to do it!" Caesar was saying shortly afterward to Iphicrates in the private parlor he had hired at his inn. "How?" asked the important man of Thessalonica eagerly. "I knew I was right to delay, Iphicrates! We're not going to use the Murder Court, nor will we lay criminal charges against Gaius Antonius Hybrida." "Not lay criminal charges?" gasped Iphicrates. "But that is the whole object!" "Nonsense! The whole object is to create a huge stir in Rome. We won't do that in Juncus's court, nor will his court enable us to steal Sicinius's Forum audiences. Juncus will tuck himself away in the smallest, most airless corner of the Basilica Porcia or Opimia, everyone compelled to be present will faint from the heat, and no one who is not compelled to be present will be there at all. The jury will hate us and Juncus will gallop through the proceedings, egged on by jurors and advocates." "But what other alternative is there?" Caesar leaned forward. "I will lay this case before the foreign praetor as a civil suit," he said. "Instead of charging Hybrida with murder, I will sue him for damages arising out of his conduct while a prefect of cavalry in Greece ten years ago. And you will lodge an enormous sponsio with the foreign praetor a sum of money far greater than Hybrida's whole fortune. Could you raise two thousand talents? And be prepared if something goes wrong to lose them?" Iphicrates drew a breath. "The sum is indeed enormous, but we came prepared to spend whatever it takes to make Rome see that she must cease to plague us with men like Hybrida and the elder Dolabella. Yes, Caesar," said Iphicrates deliberately, "we will raise two thousand talents. It will take some doing, but we will find it here in Rome." All right, then we lodge two thousand talents in sponsio with the foreign praetor in the civil suit against Gaius Antonius Hybrida. That will create a sensation in itself. It will also demonstrate to the whole of Rome that we are serious." "Hybrida won't be able to find a quarter of that sum." "Absolutely right, Iphicrates, he won't. But it is in the jurisdiction of the foreign praetor to waive the lodgement of sponsio if he considers there is a case to be answered. And if there's one thing about Varro Lucullus, it's that he is fair. He will waive Hybrida's matching sum, I'm sure of it." "But if we win and Hybrida has not lodged two thousand talents as his matching sponsio, what happens?" "Then, Iphicrates, he has to find it! Because he has to pay it! That's how a civil suit works under Roman law." "Oh, I see!" Iphicrates sat back and linked his arms about his knees, smiling gently. "Then if he loses, he's a beggar. He will have to leave Rome a bankrupt and he will never be able to return, will he?" "He will never be able to return." "On the other hand, if we lose, he takes our two thousand?" "That's right." "Do you think we will lose, Caesar?" "No." Then why are you warning me that something could go wrong? Why do you say we must be prepared to forfeit our money?" Frowning, Caesar tried to explain to this Greek what he, a Roman through and through, had absorbed from infancy. "Because Roman law is not as watertight as it seems. A lot depends on the judge, and the judge under Sulla's law cannot be Varro Lucullus. In that respect, I pin my faith upon Varro Lucullus's integrity, that he will choose a judge prepared to be dispassionate. And then there is another risk. Sometimes a brilliant advocate will find a hole in the law that can let in an entire ocean Hybrida will be defended by the best advocates in Rome." Caesar tensed, held his hands like claws. "If I can be inspired to find an answer to our problem, do you think there is no one else capable of being inspired to find an answer to Hybrida's problem? That is why men like me enjoy legal practice, Iphicrates, when judge and process are free from taint or bias! No matter how conclusive and watertight we think our case is, beware of the bright fellow on the other side. What if Cicero defends? Formidable! Mind you, I don't think he'll be tempted when he learns the details. But Hortensius wouldn't be so fussy. You must remember too that one side has to lose. We are fighting for a principle, and that is the most dangerous reason of all for going to law." I will consult with my colleagues and give you our answer tomorrow," said Iphicrates. The answer was that Caesar should proceed to ask the foreign praetor to hear a civil suit against Gaius Antonius Hybrida. Down to Varro Lucullus's tribunal went Caesar with his clients, there to apply to lodge a sponsio of two thousand talents, the sum in damages being demanded from Hybrida. Varro Lucullus sat mute, deprived of breath, then shook his head in wonder and held out his hand to examine the bank draft. "This is real and you are serious," he said to Caesar. Absolutely, praetor peregrinus.'' "Why not the Extortion Court?" "Because the suit does not involve extortion. It involves murder but more than murder! It involves torture, rape, and permanent maiming. After so many years, my clients do not wish to seek criminal justice. They are seeking damages on behalf of the people of Thespiae, Eleusis and Orchomenus whom Gaius Antonius Hybrida damaged. These people are incapable of working, of earning their livings, of being parents or husbands or wives. To support them in comfort and with kindness is costing the other citizens of Thespiae, Eleusis and Orchomenus a fortune that my clients consider Gaius Antonius Hybrida should be paying. This is a civil suit, praetor peregrinus, to recover damages." Then present your evidence in brief, advocate, so that I may decide whether there is a case to be answered." "I will offer before your court and the judge you appoint the testimony of eight victims or witnesses of atrocities. Six of these will be residents of the towns of Thespiae, Eleusis and Orchomenus. The other two are residents of the city of Rome, one a freedman citizen, the other a Syrian national." "Why do you offer Roman testimony, advocate?" "To show the court that Gaius Antonius Hybrida is still indulging in his atrocious practices, praetor peregrinus." Two hours later Varro Lucullus accepted the suit in his court and lodged the Greek sponsio. A summons was issued against Gaius Antonius Hybrida to appear to answer the charges on the morrow. After which Varro Lucullus appointed his judge. Publius Cornelius Cethegus. Keeping his face straight, Caesar cheered inside. Brilliant! The judge was a man so wealthy he based his whole power upon the claim that he could not be bought, a man so cultivated and refined that he wept when a pet fish or a lapdog died, a man who covered his head with his toga so he couldn't see a chicken being decapitated in the marketplace. And a man who had no love whatsoever for the Antonii. Would Cethegus consider that a fellow senator must be protected, no matter what the crime? Or the civil suit? No, not Cethegus! After all, there was no possibility of loss of Roman citizenship or of exile. This was civil litigation, only money at stake. Word ran round the Forum Romanum quicker than feet could run; a crowd began to gather within moments of Caesar's appearance before the foreign praetor's tribunal. As Caesar stimulated interest by enlarging upon the injuries Hybrida's victims had sustained, the crowd grew, hardly able to wait for the case to begin on the morrow could there truly be such awful sights to be seen as a flayed man and a woman whose genitalia had been so cut up she couldn't even urinate properly? News of the case beat Caesar home, as he could see from his mother's face. "What is this I hear?" she demanded, bristling. "You're acting in a case against Gaius Antonius Hybrida? That is not possible! There is a blood tie." "There is no blood tie between Hybrida and me, Mater." "His nephews are your cousins!" "They are his brother's children, and the blood tie is from their mother. Consanguinity could only matter if it were Hybrida's sons did he have any, that is! who were my cousins." "You can't do this to a Julia!" "I dislike the family implication, Mater, but there is no direct involvement of a Julia." "The Julii Caesares have allied themselves in marriage with the Antonii! That is reason enough!" "No, it is not! And more fool the Julii Caesares for seeking an alliance with the Antonii! They're boors and wastrels! For I tell you, Mater, that I would not let a Julia of my own family marry any Antonius," said Caesar, turning his shoulder. "Reconsider, Caesar, please! You will be condemned." "I will not reconsider." The result of this confrontation was an uncomfortable meal that afternoon. Helpless to contend with two such steely opponents as her husband and her mother in law, Cinnilla fled back to the nursery as soon as she could, pleading colic, teething, rashes, and every other baby ailment she could think of. Which left Caesar, chin up, to ignore Aurelia, chin up. Some did voice disapproval, but Caesar was by no means setting a precedent in taking this case; there had been many others in which consanguinity was in much higher degree than the technical objections men like Catulus raised in the prosecution of Gaius Antonius Hybrida. Of course Hybrida could not ignore the summons, so he was waiting at the foreign praetor's tribunal with a retinue of famous faces in attendance, including Quintus Hortensius and Caesar's uncle, Gaius Aurelius Cotta. Of Marcus Tullius Cicero there was no sign, even in the audience; until, Caesar noticed out of the corner of his eye, the moment in which Cethegus opened the hearing. Trust Cicero not to miss such scandalous goings on! Especially when the legal option of a civil suit had been chosen. Hybrida was uneasy, Caesar saw that at once. A big, muscular fellow with a neck as thick as a corded column, Hybrida was a typical Antonius; the wiry, curly auburn hair and red brown eyes were as Antonian as the aquiline nose and the prominent chin trying to meet across a small, thick mouth. Until he had heard about Hybrida's atrocities Caesar had dismissed the brutish face as that of a lout who drank too much, ate too much, and was overly fond of sexual pleasures. Now he knew better. It was the face of a veritable monster. Things got off to a bad start for Hybrida when Hortensius elected to take a high hand and demanded that the suit forthwith be dismissed, alleging that if the matter was one tenth as serious as the suit indicated, it should be heard before a criminal court. Varro Lucullus sat expressionless, unwilling to intervene unless his judge asked for his advice. Which Cethegus was not about to do. Sooner or later his turn would have come up to preside over this court, and he had not looked forward to some monotonous argument about a purse of moneys. Now here he was with a veritable plum of a case one which might repel him, but would at least not bore him. So he dealt smartly with Hortensius and got things under way with smooth authority. By noon Cethegus was ready to hear the witnesses, whose appearance created a sensation. Iphicrates and his companions had chosen the victims they had brought all the way from Greece with an eye to drama as well as to pity. Most moving was a man who could not testify on his own behalf at all; Hybrida had removed most of his face and his tongue. But his wife was as articulate as she was filled with hatred, and a damning witness. Cethegus sat listening to her and looking at her poor husband green faced and sweating. After their testimony concluded he adjourned for the day, praying he got home before he was sick. But it was Hybrida who tried to have the last word. As he left the area of the tribunal he grasped Caesar by the arm and detained him. "Where did you collect this sorry lot?" he asked, assuming an expression of pained bewilderment. "You must have had to comb the world! But it won't work, you know. What are they, after all? A handful of miscreant misfits! That's all! A mere handful anxious to take hefty Roman damages instead of existing on piddling Greek alms!" "A mere handful?" roared Caesar at the top of his voice, and stilling the noise of the dispersing crowd, which turned to hear what he said. "Is that all? I say to you, Gaius Antonius Hybrida, that one would be too many! Just one! Just one man or woman or child despoiled in this frightful way is one too many! Just one man or woman or child plundered of youth and beauty and pride in being alive is one too many! Go away! Go home!" Gaius Antonius Hybrida went home, appalled to discover that his advocates had no wish to accompany him. Even his brother had found an excuse to go elsewhere. Though he did not walk alone; beside him trotted a small plump man who had become quite a friend in the year and a half since he had joined the Senate. This man's name was Gaius Aelius Staienus, and he was hungry for powerful allies, hungry to eat free of charge at someone else's table, and very hungry for money. He had had some of Pompey's money last year, when he had been Mamercus's quaestor and incited a mutiny oh, not a nasty, bloody mutiny! And it had all worked out extremely well in the end, with not a whiff of suspicion stealing his way. "You're going to lose," he said to Hybrida as they entered Hybrida's very nice mansion on the Palatine. Hybrida was not disposed to argue. "I know." "But wouldn't it be nice to win?" asked Staienus dreamily. "Two thousand talents to spend, that's the reward for winning." "I'm going to have to find two thousand talents, which will bankrupt me for more years than I have left to live." "Not necessarily," said Staienus in a purring voice. He sat down in Hybrida's cliental chair, and looked about. "Have you any of that Chian wine left?'' he asked. Hybrida went to a console table and poured two undiluted goblets from a flagon, handed one to his guest, and sat down. He drank deeply, then gazed at Staienus. "You've got something boiling in your pot," he said. "What is it?" Two thousand talents is a vast sum. In fact, one thousand talents is a vast sum." "That's true." The gross little mouth peeled its thick lips back to reveal Hybrida's small and perfect white teeth. "I am not a fool, Staienus! If I agree to split the two thousand talents equally with you, you'll guarantee to get me off. Is that right?" "That's right." Then I agree. You get me off, and one thousand of those Greek talents are yours." "It's simple, really," said Staienus thoughtfully. "You have Sulla to thank for it, of course. But he's dead, so he won't care if you thank me instead." "Stop tormenting me and tell me!" "Oh, yes! I forgot that you prefer to torment others than be tormented yourself." Like many small men suddenly given a position of power, Staienus was incapable of concealing his pleasure at owning power, even though this meant that when the affair was over, so was his friendship with Hybrida. No matter how successful his ploy. But he didn't care. A thousand talents was reward enough. What was friendship with a creature like Hybrida anyway? "Tell me, Staienus, or get out!" "The ius auxilii ferendi" was what Staienus said. "Well, what about it?" "The original function of the tribunes of the plebs, and the only function Sulla didn't take off them to rescue a member of the plebs from the hands of a magistrate." "The ius auxilii ferendi! cried Hybrida, amazed. For a moment his pouting face lightened, then darkened again. "They wouldn't do it," he said. "They might," said Staienus. "Not Sicinius! Never Sicinius! All it takes is one veto within the college and the other nine tribunes of the plebs are powerless. Sicinius wouldn't stand for it, Staienus. He's a wretched nuisance, but he's not bribable." "Sicinius," said Staienus happily, "is not popular with any of his nine colleagues. He's made such a thorough nuisance of himself and stolen their thunder in the Forum! that they're sick to death of him. In fact the day before yesterday I heard two of them threaten to throw him off the Tarpeian Rock unless he shut up about restoring their rights." "You mean Sicinius could be intimidated?" "Yes. Definitely. Of course you'll have to find a goodly sum of cash between now and tomorrow morning, because none of them will be in it unless they're well rewarded. But you can do that especially with a thousand talents coming in because of it." How much?'' asked Hybrida. "Nine times fifty thousand sesterces. That's four hundred and fifty thousand. Can you do it?" "I can try. I'll go to my brother, he doesn't want scandal in the family. And there are a few other sources. Yes, Staienus, I believe I can do it." And so it was arranged. Gaius Aelius Staienus had a busy evening bustling from the house of one tribune of the plebs to another Marcus Atilius Bulbus, Manius Aquillius, Quintus Curius, Publius Popillius, and on through nine of the ten. He did not go near the house of Gnaeus Sicinius. The hearing was due to recommence two hours after dawn; by then the Forum Romanum had already experienced high drama, so it promised to be quite a day for the Forum frequenters, who were ecstatic. Just after dawn his nine fellow tribunes of the plebs had ganged up on Gnaeus Sicinius and physically hauled him to the top of the Capitol, where they beat him black and blue, then held him over the end of the overhanging ledge called the Tarpeian Rock and let him look down at the needle sharp outcrop below. No more of this perpetual agitating to see the powers of the tribunate of the plebs restored! they cried to him as he dangled, and got an oath from him that he would in future do as his nine colleagues told him. Sicinius was then packed off home in a litter. And not more than a very few moments after Cethegus opened the second day's proceedings in the suit against Hybrida, nine tribunes of the plebs descended upon Varro Lucullus's tribunal shouting that a member of the Plebs was being detained against his will by a magistrate. "I appeal to you to exercise the ius auxilii ferendi!" cried Hybrida, arms extended piteously. "Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus, we have been appealed to by a member of the Plebs to exercise the ius auxilii ferendi!" said Manius Aquillius. "I hereby notify you that we so exercise it!" "This is a manifest outrage!" Varro Lucullus shouted, leaping to his feet. "I refuse to allow you to exercise that right! Where is the tenth tribune?" "At home in bed, very sick," sneered Manius Aquillius, "but you can send to him if you like. He won't veto us." "You transgress justice!" yelled Cethegus. "An outrage! A shame! A scandal! How much has Hybrida paid you?" "Release Gaius Antonius Hybrida, or we will take hold of every last man who objects and throw him from the Tarpeian Rock!" cried Manius Aquillius. "You are obstructing justice!" said Varro Lucullus. "There can be no justice in a magistrate's court, as you well know, Varro Lucullus," said Quintus Curius. "One man is not a jury! If you wish to proceed against Gaius Antonius, then do so in a criminal court, where the ius auxilii ferendi does not apply!" Caesar stood without moving, nor did he try to object. His clients huddled in his rear, shivering. Face stony, he turned to them and said softly, "I am a patrician, and not a magistrate. We must let the praetor peregrinus deal with this. Say nothing!" "Very well, take your member of the Plebs!" said Varro Lucullus, hand on Cethegus's arm to restrain him. "And," said Gaius Antonius Hybrida, standing in the midst of nine tribunes of the plebs bent on war, "since I have won the case, I will take the sponsio lodged by our Greek loving Caesar's clients here." The reference to Greek love was a deliberate slur which brought back to Caesar in one red flash all the pain of that accusation concerning King Nicomedes. Without hesitating, he walked through the ranks of the tribunes of the plebs and took Hybrida's throat between his hands. Hybrida had always considered himself a Hercules among men, but he could neither break the hold nor manage to come at his taller assailant, whose strength he would not have believed were he not its victim. It took Varro Lucullus and his six lictors to drag Caesar off him, though some men in the crowd wondered afterward at the inertia of the nine tribunes of the plebs, who made no move to help Hybrida at all. "This case is dismissed!" bawled Varro Lucullus at the top of his lungs. "There is no suit! I, Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus, so declare it! Plaintiffs, take back your sponsio! And every last mother's son of you go home!" "The sponsio! The sponsio belongs to Gaius Antonius!" cried another voice: Gaius Aelius Staienus. "It does not belong to Hybrida!" Cethegus yelled. "The case has been dismissed by the praetor peregrinus, in whose jurisdiction it lies! The sponsio returns to its owners, there is no wager!" "Will you take your member of the Plebs and quit my tribunal!" said Varro Lucullus through his teeth to the tribunes of the plebs. "Go, get out of here, all of you! And I take leave to tell you that you have done the cause of the tribunate of the plebs no good by this scandalous miscarriage of its original purpose! I will do my utmost to keep you muzzled forever!" Off went the nine men with Hybrida, Staienus trailing after them howling for the lost sponsio, Hybrida tenderly feeling his bruised throat. While the excited crowd milled, Varro Lucullus and Caesar looked at each other. "I would have loved to let you strangle the brute, but I hope you understand that I could not," said Varro Lucullus. "I understand," said Caesar, still shaking. "I thought I was well in control! I'm not a hot man, you know. But I don't care for excrement like Hybrida calling me a deviate." "That's obvious," said Varro Lucullus dryly, remembering what his brother had had to say on the subject. Caesar too now paused to recollect whose brother he was with, but decided that Varro Lucullus was quite capable of making up his own mind. "Do you believe," said Cicero, rushing up now that the violence appeared to be at an end, the gall of that worm? To demand the sponsio, by all the gods!" "It takes a lot of gall to do that," said Caesar, pointing to the mutilated man and his spokeswoman wife. "Disgusting!" cried Cicero, sitting down on the steps of the tribunal and mopping his face with his handkerchief. "Well," said Caesar to Iphicrates, who hovered uncertainly, "at least we managed to save your two thousand talents. And I would say that if what you wanted was to create a stir in Rome, you have succeeded. I think the Senate will be very careful in future whom it sends to govern Macedonia. Now go back to your inn, and take those poor unfortunates with you. I'm just sorry that the citizens of their towns will have to continue supporting them. But I did warn you." "I am sorry about only one thing," said Iphicrates, moving away. "That we failed to punish Gaius Antonius Hybrida." "We didn't succeed in ruining him financially," said Caesar, "but he will have to leave Rome. It will be a long time before he dares to show his face in this city again." "Do you think," asked Cicero, "that Hybrida actually bribed nine tribunes of the plebs?'' "I for one am sure of it!" snapped Cethegus, whose anger was slow to cool. "Apart from Sicinius little though I love that man! this year's tribunes of the plebs are a shabby lot!" "Why should they be splendid?" asked Caesar, whose anger had cooled completely. "There's no glory to be had in the office these days. It's a dead end." "I wonder," asked Cicero, loath to abandon the direction of his thoughts, "how much nine tribunes of the plebs cost Hybrida?" Cethegus pursed his lips. "About forty thousand each." Varro Lucullus's eyes danced. "You speak with such absolute authority, Cethegus! How do you know?" The King of the Backbenchers set his ire aside; it did not become his style, though, he assured himself, it was excusable. He proceeded to answer the foreign praetor with raised brows and the customary drawl in his voice. "My dear praetor peregrinus, there is nothing I do not know about the cupidity of senators! I could give you every bribable senator's price down to the last sestertius. And for that shabby lot, forty thousand each." And that, as Hybrida was busy discovering, was what Gaius Aelius Staienus had paid; he had kept ninety thousand sesterces for himself. "Give them back!" said the man who loved to torture and mutilate his fellow men. "Give the extra money back, Staienus, or I'll tear your eyes out with my own fingers! I'll be three hundred and sixty thousand sesterces out of purse as it is you and your two thousand talents!" "Don't forget," said the uncowed Staienus, looking vicious, "that it was my idea to use the ius auxulii ferendi. I'll keep the ninety thousand. As for you thank all the gods that you're not stripped of your whole fortune!"
The sensation of the almost hearing took some time to die away, and there were several long lasting results of it. One was that that year's College of Tribunes of the Plebs went down in the annals of political diarists as the most shameful ever; one other was that Macedonia did remain in the hands of responsible if warlike governors; Gnaeus Sicinius spoke no more in the Forum about restoring its full powers to the tribunate of the plebs; Caesar's fame as an advocate soared; and Gaius Antonius Hybrida absented himself from Rome and the places Romans frequented for several years. In fact, he went on a little trip to the island of Cephallenia in the Ionian Sea, where he found himself the only civilized man (if such he could be called) in the whole region, and discovered too several incredibly ancient grave mounds rilled with treasure exquisitely chased and inlaid daggers, masks made of pure gold, electrum flagons, rock crystal cups, heaps of jewelry. Greater by far in value than two thousand talents. Great enough to assure him the consulship when he returned home, if he had to buy every single vote.
No stirring incidents enlivened the next year for Caesar, who remained in Rome and practiced as an advocate with resounding success. Cicero was not in Rome that year, however. Elected quaestor, he drew the lot for Lilybaeum in western Sicily, where he would work under the governor, Sextus Peducaeus. As his quaestorship meant he was now a member of the Senate, he was willing to leave Rome (though he had hoped for a job within Italy, and cursed his luck in the lots) and plunge himself enthusiastically into his work, which was mostly to do with the grain supply. It was a poor year, but the consuls had dealt with the coming shortage in an effective way; they bought huge quantities of grain still in storage in Sicily, and sold it cheaply in Rome by enacting a lex frumentaria. Like almost everyone else literate, Cicero adored both to write and receive letters, and had been an avid correspondent for many years before this one, his thirty first. But it was to this time in western Sicily that the enduring focus of his epistolary efforts was to date; that is, the steady flow of letters between him and the erudite plutocrat, Titus Pomponius Atticus. Thanks to Atticus, the loneliness of those many months in insular Lilybaeum was alleviated by a steady flow of information and gossip about everything and everyone in Rome. Said Atticus in a missive sent toward the end of Cicero's Sicilian exile:
The expected food riots never happened, only because Rome is fortunate in her consuls. I had a few words with Gaius Cotta's brother, Marcus, who is now consul elect for next year. In this nation of clever men, I asked, why are the common people still obliged from time to time to subsist on millet and turnips? It is high time, I said, that Rome levied against the private growers of Sicily and our other grain provinces and forced them to sell to the State rather than hang on for higher prices from the private grain merchants, for all too often that simply means the grain sits ensiloed in Sicily when it ought to be feeding the common people. I disapprove of stockpiling for profit when that affects the well being of a nation full of clever men. Marcus Cotta listened to me with great attention, and promised to do something about it next year. As I do not have shares in grain, I can afford to be patriotic and altruistic. And stop laughing, Marcus Tullius. Quintus Hortensius, our most self important plebeian aedile in a generation, has given magnificent games. Along with a free distribution of grain to the populace. He intends to be consul in his year! Of course your absence has meant he is enjoying a high time of it in the law courts, but young Caesar always manages to give him a fright, and often filches his laurels. He doesn't like it, and was heard to complain the other day that he wished Caesar would depart from Rome too. But those bits of Hortensical nonsense are as nothing compared to the banquet he gave on the occasion of his (yes, it has finally happened!) inauguration as an augur. He served roast peacock. You read aright: roast peacock. The birds (six of them all told) had been roasted and carved down to the eunuch's nose, then the cooks somehow reassembled all the feathers over the top, so that they were carried in head high on golden platters in all their fine plumage, tails fanned out and crests nodding. It created a sensation, and other gourmets like Cethegus, Philippus and the senior consul elect, Lucullus, sat there contemplating suicide. However, dear Marcus, the actual eating of the birds was an anticlimax. An old army boot would have tasted and chewed! better. The death of Appius Claudius Pulcher in Macedonia last year has led to a most amusing situation. That family never seems to have much luck, does it? First, nephew Philippus when he was censor stripped Appius Claudius of everything, then Appius Claudius wasn't enterprising enough to buy up big at the proscription auctions, then he became too ill to govern his province, then he caps a bitter life by getting to his province at last, doing very well in military terms, and expiring before he could fix his fortune. The six children he has left behind we all know only too well, of course. Frightful! Especially the youngest members. But Appius Claudius, the oldest son, is turning out to be very clever and enterprising. First, the moment his father's back was turned he gave the oldest girl, Claudia, to Quintus Marcius Rex, though she had no dowry whatsoever. I believe Rex paid through the nose for her! Like all the Claudii Pulchri she is a ravishing piece of goods, and that certainly helped. We expect that Rex will fare reasonably well as her husband, as she is reputed to be the only one of the three girls with a nice disposition. Three boys are a difficulty, no one denies that. And adoption is out of the question. The youngest boy (who calls himself plain Publius Clodius) is so repulsive and wild that no one can be found willing to adopt him. Gaius Claudius, the middle boy, is an oaf. Unadoptable too. So there is young Appius Claudius, just twenty years of age, obliged to fund not only his own career in the Senate, but the careers of two younger brothers as well. What Quintus Marcius Rex was compelled to contribute can be but a drop in the empty Claudius Pulcher bucket. Yet he has done remarkably well, dear Marcus Tullius. Knowing that he would be refused by every tata with a grain of sense, he looked around for a rich bride and went a wooing guess who? None other than that dismally plain spinster, Servilia Gnaea! You know who I mean she was, you might say, hired by Scaurus and Mamercus to live with Drusus's six orphans. Had no dowry and the most terrifying mother in Rome, a Porcia Liciniana. But it appears Scaurus and Mamercus dowered Gnaea with a full two hundred talents to be paid to her the moment Drusus's orphans were all grown. And they are grown! Marcus Porcius Cato, the youngest of the brood, aged eighteen at the moment, lives in his father's house and has declared his independence. When the twenty year old Appius Claudius Pulcher came a wooing, Servilia Gnaea grabbed him. She is, they say, all of thirty two years old now, and an old maid to her core. I do not believe the rumor that she shaves! Her mother does, but that everybody knows. The best part about Appius Claudius's bargain is that his mother in law, the aforementioned Porcia Liciniana, has retired to a commodious seaside villa which, it seems, Scaurus and Mamercus bought against this day at the time they hired the daughter. So Appius Claudius does not have to live with his mother in law. The two hundred talents will come in handy. But that is not the best of it, Marcus. The best is that Appius Claudius has married off his youngest sister, Clodilla, to none other than Lucullus! All of fifteen years old he and Lucullus say. I'd make her fourteen, but I might be wrong. What a match! Thanks to Sulla, Lucullus is fabulously rich, and has besides control of the fortunes of The Heavenly Twins. Oh, I am not implying that our upright, downright Lucullus would embezzle from Faustus and Fausta but what is to stop him popping the interest in his purse? Thus due to the amazing energy and enterprise of this twenty year old youth, the fortunes of the family Appius Claudius Pulcher have taken an astonishing turn for the better. All of Rome is laughing, but not without sincere admiration. He is worth watching, our Appius Claudius! Publius Clodius, aged fourteen then Clodilla is fifteen is already a menace, and his big brother will do nothing to discipline him. He's very good looking and precocious, he's dangerous with girls and up to all kinds of mischief. I believe, however, that he is intellectually brilliant, so he may settle down in time and become a model of the patrician Roman nobleman. And what else have I got to tell you? Oh, yes. That famous pun of Gnaeus Sicinius's about Marcus Crassus you will not have forgotten the hay on both Crassus's horns! is even cleverer than we thought at the time. It has just come out that Sicinius has been heavily in debt to Crassus for years. So the pun contained yet another nuance. Faenum is hay'' and faenerator is "moneylender." The hay wrapped round Crassus's horns is loan money! Rome learned of the additional nuance because Sicinius is a ruined man and cannot pay Crassus back. I wasn't aware that Crassus lent money, but his nose is clean, alas. He lends only to senators and does not levy interest. His way of building up a senatorial clientele. I think it will pay to watch friend Crassus. Do not borrow money from him, Marcus! Interest free is a great temptation, but Crassus calls in his debts whenever he feels like it no notice whatsoever and he expects to be paid at once. If he isn't paid, you're ruined. And there is not a thing the censors (if we had censors) could do about it, because he charges no interest. Quod erat demonstrandum: he cannot be called a usurer. He's just a thoroughly nice fellow busy helping his senatorial friends out. And I believe that is all. Terentia is well, as is little Tullia. What a nice child your daughter is! Your brother is much as always. How I wish he could learn to get on better with my sister! But I think both you and I have given up on that. Pomponia is a termagant, Quintus is a real country squire. By that I mean he is stubborn, frugal, and proud. And wants to be master of his house. Keep well. I will write again before I leave Rome to go back to Epirus, where my cattle ranch is thriving. Too wet for sheep, of course their feet rot. But everyone is so keen to grow wool that they forget how much cowhide the world consumes. Cattle as an investment are underestimated.
2
At the end of Sextilis, Caesar received an urgent summons from Bithynia. King Nicomedes was dying, and asking for him. This was exactly what Caesar needed; Rome was growing daily more suffocating, the courts duller. And though the news from Bithynia was not happy, it was to be expected. Within one day of reading Oradaltis's note, he was packed and ready to go. Burgundus would be with him as always, Demetrius who plucked his body hair could not be left behind nor could the Spartan Brasidas, who made his Civic Crowns out of oak leaves. In fact, this time Caesar traveled with more state than of yore; his importance was increasing, and he now found himself in need of a secretary, several scribes, several personal servants, and a small escort of his own freedmen. Therefore it was with twenty persons in his entourage that he left for the east. An expensive exercise. He was now twenty five years old, and he had been in the Senate for five of those years. "But don't think," said Burgundus to the new members of the party, "that you're going to travel in comfort. When Gaius Julius moves, he moves!"
Nicomedes was still alive when Caesar reached Bithynia, though he could not recover from this illness. "It's really nothing more nor less than plain old age," said Queen Oradaltis, weeping. "Oh, I shall miss him! I have been his wife since I was fifteen. How will I manage without him?" "You will because you have to," said Caesar, drying her eyes. "I see that dog Sulla is still brisk enough, so you'll have his company. From what you tell me, Nicomedes will be glad to go. I for one dread the idea of lingering beyond my usefulness." "He took to his bed for good ten days ago," said Oradaltis, pattering down a marble corridor, "and the physicians say he may go at any time today, tomorrow, next month no one knows." When he set eyes on the wasted figure in the big carven bed, Caesar could not believe he would last beyond that day. Little was left save skin and bone, and nothing at all of the King's physical individuality; he was dry and wrinkled as a winter apple. But when Caesar spoke his name he opened his eyes at once, held out his hands and smiled gummily, the tears falling. "You came!" he cried, voice surprisingly strong. "How could I not?" asked Caesar, sitting down on the edge of the bed to take both skeletal claws in a firm grip. "When you ask me to come, I come." With Caesar there to carry him from bed to couch and couch to chair somewhere in the sun and out of the wind, Nicomedes brightened, though the use of his legs was gone permanently and he would drop into a light doze halfway through a sentence, then wake up long moments later with no memory of what he had been saying. His ability to eat solid foods had gone; he existed upon beakers of goat's milk mixed with fortified wine and honey, and dribbled more of them down his outside than he managed to drink. It is interesting, thought the fastidious and immaculate Caesar, that when this is happening to someone so beloved, the usual reactions are not present. I am not repelled. I am not tempted to command a servant to clean him up. Rather, it is a pleasure to care for him. I would empty his chamber pot gladly. "Have you heard from your daughter?" Caesar asked him on one of his better days. "Not directly. However, it seems she is still alive and well at Cabeira." "Can't you negotiate with Mithridates to bring her home?" "At the price of the kingdom, Caesar, you know that." "But unless she comes home there is no heir anyway." "Bithynia has an heir right here," said Nicomedes. "In Nicomedia? Who?" "I thought of leaving Bithynia to you." "Me?" "Yes, you. To be King." "No, my dear old friend, that isn't possible." "You would make a great king, Caesar. Wouldn't you like to rule your own land?" My own land is Rome, Nicomedes, and like all Romans, I was brought up to believe in the Republic." The King's bottom lip trembled. "Can't I tempt you?" "No." Bithynia needs someone young and very strong, Caesar. I can think of no one but you!" "There is Rome herself." "And Romans like Gaius Verres." "That's true. But there are also Romans like me. Rome is the only answer, Nicomedes. Unless you want to see Pontus rule." "Anything is preferable to that!" "Then leave Bithynia to Rome." "Can you draw up my testament in a properly Roman fashion?" "Yes." "Then do so, Caesar. I will leave my kingdom to Rome."
Halfway through December, King Nicomedes III of Bithynia died. One hand was given to Caesar and the other to his wife, though he did not wake from his long dream to say goodbye. The will had been couriered to Rome soon enough that Caesar had received a reply from the Senate before the eighty five year old King died, to the effect that the governor of Asia Province, Marcus Junius Juncus, was being notified, and would journey to Bithynia to begin incorporating Bithynia into Asia Province after the King was dead; as Caesar intended to stay until this happened, Caesar was to inform Juncus when it had. That was a disappointment; Bithynia's first governor would not be a nice or understanding man. "I want every treasure and work of art in the whole kingdom catalogued," said Caesar to the widowed queen, "also the contents of the treasury, the size of the fleets, the size of the army, and every suit of armor, sword, spear, piece of artillery and siege engine you have." "It will be done, but why?" asked Oradaltis, frowning. "Because if the governor of Asia Province thinks to enrich his own purse by appropriating as much as one spear or one drachma, I want to know," said Caesar grimly. "I will then make it my business to prosecute him in Rome, and I'll secure a conviction too! Because while you're cataloguing everything, you will make sure you have at least six of the most important Romans in your land as witnesses that the catalogue is correct. That will render the document hard evidence even a senatorial jury cannot ignore." "Oh, dear! Will I be safe?" asked the Queen. "In person, quite safe. However, if you can bear to uproot yourself and move into a private house preferably not here in Nicomedia or in Chalcedon or Prusa taking everything you want with you, then you ought to survive in peace and comfort for the rest of your life." "You dislike this Marcus Junius Juncus very much." "I dislike him very much." "Is he a Gaius Verres?" "I doubt that, Oradaltis. Just ordinarily venal. Thinking himself the first official representative of Rome on the scene, I imagine he'll steal whatever he decides Rome will let him get away with," said Caesar calmly. "Rome will demand a catalogue of everything from him, but it's my guess that the list you make and the list he makes won't tally. Then we'll have him!" "Won't he suspect the existence of a catalogue?" Caesar laughed. "Not he! Eastern realms are not prone to be so precise precision is Roman. Of course knowing I'm here he'll think I've skimmed the place first, so it won't even cross his mind that I might have conspired with you to trap him." By the end of December it was all done. The Queen shifted her residence to the little fishing village of Rheba, around the corner of the Bosporus on the Euxine shore. Here Nicomedes had maintained a private villa which his queen thought an ideal place for a retired ruler to occupy. "When Juncus demands to annex your villa, you will show him a copy of the deed of ownership and inform him that the original is in the hands of your bankers. Where will you bank?" "I had thought Byzantium. It will be closest to me." "Excellent! Byzantium is not a part of Bithynia, so Juncus won't be able to get a look at your accounts or his hands on your funds. You will also inform Juncus that the contents of your villa are yours, a part of your dowry. That will prevent his taking anything away from you. So don't list anything you do take with you in the catalogue! If anyone is entitled to skim the place, it's you." "Well, I must think of Nysa too," said the old woman wistfully. "Who knows? Perhaps one day before I am dead, my daughter will be returned to me." Word came that Juncus had sailed into the Hellespont and would arrive in Nicomedia some days hence; he intended to pause en route to inspect Prusa, said his messenger. Caesar established the Queen in her villa, made sure that the treasury yielded her enough to provide her with an adequate income, lodged Oradaltis's funds and the catalogue with her chosen bankers in Byzantium, and then took ship from Byzantium with his retinue of twenty. He would hug the Thracian coast of the Propontis all the way to the Hellespont, and thus avoid encountering Marcus Junius Juncus, the governor of Asia Province and the governor now of Bithynia. Caesar was not going back to Rome. Instead he planned to sail to Rhodes, and there study with Apollonius Molon for a year or two. Cicero had convinced him that this would put an additional polish on his oratory, though he was well aware how good his oratory already was. He didn't miss Rome as Cicero always did, nor did he miss his family. Very pleasant and reassuring though possession of that family was, his wife and child and mother were there to wait for him, and would be there when eventually he returned. It never occurred to him that one or more of them might be snatched from him by death while he was away. This trip, he was discovering, was an expensive one, and he had refused to allow Nicomedes or Oradaltis to give him money. He had asked for a keepsake only, and been given a genuine emerald from Scythia rather than the much paler, cloudier stones from the Sinus Arabicus; a flattish cabochon the size of a hen's egg, it had the King and Queen of Bithynia engraved in profile upon it. Not for sale at any price, nor for any need. However, Caesar never worried about money. For the time being he had sufficient, and the future, he was convinced, would look after itself; an attitude which drove his careful mother to distraction. But retinues of twenty and hired ships did multiply by a factor of ten those early journeys he had made! In Smyrna he spent time with Publius Rutilius Rufus again, and was highly entertained by the old man's stories of Cicero, who had visited him on his way back to Rome from Rhodes. "An amazing kind of mushroom!" was Rutilius Rufus's verdict to Caesar. "He'll never be happy in Rome, you know, though he worships the place. I would call him the salt of the earth a decent, warmhearted and old fashioned fellow." "I know what you mean," nodded Caesar. "The trouble is, Uncle Publius, that he has a superbly able mind and much ambition." "Like Gaius Marius." "No," said Caesar firmly. "Not like Gaius Marius."
* * *
In Miletus he learned how Verres had stolen the finest wools and tapestries and rugs the city owned, and advised the ethnarch to lodge a complaint with the Senate in Rome. "Though," he said, preparing to embark for the voyage to Halicarnassus, "you were lucky he didn't pilfer your art and despoil your temples as well. That was what he did elsewhere." The ship he had hired in Byzantium was a neat enough cargo vessel of some forty oars, high in the poop where the two great rudder oars resided, and having a cabin for his use on the deck amidships. Thirty assorted mules and horses including the Nesaean and his own beloved Toes were accommodated in stalls between his cabin and the poop. As they never sailed more than fifty miles without putting in at another port, readying to sail again was something of a fussy ordeal as horses and mules were brought back on board and settled down. Miletus was no different from Smyrna, Pitane, half a dozen earlier ports of call; everyone in the harborside area knew that this particular ship was on hire to a Roman senator, and everyone was hugely interested. Look, there he was! The lovely young man in the pristine toga who walked as if he owned the world! Well, and didn't he own the world? He was a Roman senator. Of course the lesser lights in his retinue contributed to the talk, so that all the habitual loiterers around the Miletus harborfront knew that he was a high aristocrat, a brilliant man, and single handedly responsible for persuading King Nicomedes of Bithynia to leave his realm to Rome when he died. Little wonder then that Caesar himself was always glad when the gangplanks were away, the anchors up, and the ship cast off to put out to sea again. But it was a beautiful day and the water was calm, a good breeze blew to fill the great linen sail and spare the oarsmen, and Halicarnassus, the captain assured Caesar as they stood together on the poop, would be reached on the following day. Some seven or eight miles down the coast, the tip of a promontory jutted into the sea; Caesar's ship sailed placidly between it and a looming island. "Pharmacussa," said the captain, pointing to the island. They passed it close inshore with Iasus on the mainland much further away, on a course which would skirt the next peninsula on that dissected coast. A very small place, Pharmacussa was shaped like a lopsided pair of woman's breasts, the southernmost mound being the bigger of the two. "Does anyone live there?" asked Caesar idly. "Not even a shepherd and his sheep." The island had almost slid by when a low, sleek war galley emerged from behind the bigger breast, moving very fast, and on a course to intercept Caesar's ship. "Pirates!" squawked the captain, face white. Caesar, who had turned his head to look down their wake, nodded. "Yes, and another galley coming up our rear. How many men aboard the one in front?'' he asked. "Fighting men? At least a hundred, armed to the teeth." "And on the one behind?" The captain craned his neck. "It's a bigger ship. Perhaps one hundred and fifty." "Then you do not recommend that we resist." "Ye gods, Senator, no!" the man gasped. "They would kill us as soon as look at us! We must hope they're looking for a ransom, because they know from our lie in the water that we're not carrying cargo." "Do you mean they're aware there's someone aboard us who will fetch a good ransom?" "They know everything, Senator! They have spies in every port around the Aegean. It's my guess the spies rowed out from Miletus yesterday with a description of my vessel and the news that she carries a Roman senator." "Are the pirates based on Pharmacussa, then?" No, Senator. It would be too easy for Miletus and Priene to scour them out. They've just been hiding there for a few days on the lookout for a likely victim. It's never necessary to wait more than a few days. Something juicy always comes along. We're unlucky. This being winter and usually stormy, I'd hoped to escape pirates. But the weather has been too good, alas!" "What will they do with us?" "Take us back to their base and wait for the ransom." "Whereabouts is their base likely to be?" "Lycia, probably. Somewhere between Patara and Myra." "Quite a long way from here." "Several days' sail." "Why so far away?" "It's absolutely safe there a haven for pirates! Hundreds of hidden coves and valleys there are at least thirty big pirate settlements in the area." Caesar looked unperturbed, though the two galleys were now closing on his ship very quickly; he could see the armed men lining each gunwale, and hear their shouts. "What's to stop me sailing back with a fleet after I've been ransomed and capturing the lot of them?'' "You'd never find the right cove, Senator. There are hundreds, and they all look exactly the same. A bit like the old Knossus labyrinth, only linear rather than square.'' Summoning his body servant, Caesar asked calmly for his toga, and when the terrified man came back bearing an off white armful, Caesar stood while he draped it. Burgundus appeared. "Do we fight, Caesar?" "No, of course not. It's one thing to fight when the odds are even remotely favorable, quite another when the odds indicate that to fight is suicide. We'll go tamely, Burgundus. Hear me?" "I hear." Then make sure you tell everyone I want no foolhardy heroes." Back he turned to the captain. "So I'd never locate the right cove again, eh?" "Never, Senator, believe me. Many have tried." In Rome we were led to believe Publius Servilius Vatia got rid of the pirates when he conquered the Isauri. He was even let call himself Vatia Isauricus, so great was his campaign." "Pirates are like swarming insects, Caesar. Smoke them out all you like, but as soon as the air is clear again, they're back." "I see. Then when Vatia put ooops, Vatia Isauricus! put an end to the reign of King Zenicetes of the pirates, he only scraped the scum off the surface. Is that correct, Captain?" "Yes and no. King Zenicetes was just one pirate chieftain. As for the Isauri" the captain shrugged "none of us who sail these waters could ever understand why a great Roman general went to war against an inland tribe of Pisidian savages thinking he was striking a blow at piracy! Perhaps a few Isauric grandsons have joined the pirates, but the Isauri are too far from the sea to be concerned with piracy and pirates." Both warships were now alongside, and men were pouring on board the merchantman. "Ah! Here comes the leader," said Caesar coolly. A tall, youngish man clad in a Tyrian purple tunic heavily embroidered with gold pushed his way between the milling hordes on the deck and mounted the plank steps to the poop. He was not armed, nor did he look at all martial. "Good day to you," said Caesar. Am I mistaken in thinking that you are the Roman senator Gaius Julius Caesar, winner of the Civic Crown?'' "No, you are not mistaken." The pirate chieftain's light green eyes narrowed; he put a manicured hand up to his carefully curled yellow hair. "You're very collected, Senator," the pirate said, his Greek indicating that perhaps he came from one of the isles of the Sporades. "I see no point in being anything else," said Caesar, lifting his brows. "I presume you will allow me to ransom myself and my people, so I have little to fear." "That's true. But it doesn't stop my captives from shitting themselves in terror." "Not this captive!" "Well, you're a war hero." "What happens now er I didn't quite catch the name?" "Polygonus." The pirate turned to look at his men, who had gathered the merchantman's crew into one group and Caesar's twenty attendants into another. Like their chief, the rest of the pirates were dandies; some sported wigs, some used hot tongs to produce rolling curls in their long locks, some were painted like whores, some preferred exquisitely close shaves and the masculine look, and all were very well dressed. What happens now?'' Caesar repeated. Your crew is put aboard my ship, I put a crew of my own men at the oars of your ship, and we all row south as fast as we can, Senator. By sunset we'll be off Cnidus, but we'll keep on going. Three days from now you'll be safe in my home, where you will live as my guest until your ransom is paid." "Won't it be easier to allow some of my servants to leave the ship here? A lighter could take them back to Miletus that is a rich city, it ought not to have too much difficulty raising my ransom. How much is my ransom, by the way?" The chieftain ignored the second question for the moment; he shook his head emphatically. "No, we've had our last ransom from Miletus for a while. We distribute the burden around because sometimes the ransomed men are slow to pay it back to whichever community scraped it together. It's the turn of Xanthus and Patara Lycia. So we'll let you send your servants off when we get to Patara." Polygonus tossed his head to make his curls float. "As for the sum twenty silver talents." Caesar reared back in horror. "Twenty silver talents?" he cried, outraged. "Is that all I'm worth?" "It's the going rate for senators, all pirates have agreed. You're too young to be a magistrate." "I am Gaius Julius Caesar!" said the captive haughtily. "Clearly, fellow, you fail to understand! I am not only a patrician, I am also a Julian! And what does being a Julian mean, you ask? It means that I am descended from the goddess Aphrodite through her son, Aeneas. I come from consular stock, and I will be consul in my year. I am not a mere senator, fellow! I am the winner of a Civic Crown I speak in the House I sit on the middle tier and when I enter the House every man including consulars and censors! must rise to his feet and applaud me. Twenty silver talents? I am worthy fifty silver talents!" Polygonus had listened fascinated to all this; his captives were never like this one! So sure of himself, so unafraid, so arrogant! Yet there was something in the handsome face Polygonus liked could that be a twinkle in the eyes? Was this Gaius Julius Caesar mocking him? But why should he mock in a way which meant he was going to have to pay back more than double his proper ransom? He was serious he had to be serious! However ... Surely that was a twinkle in his eyes! "All right, Your Majesty, fifty silver talents it is!" said Polygonus, his own eyes twinkling. "That's better," said Caesar. And turned his back.
* * *
Three days later having encountered no Rhodian or other city fleet patrolling the empty seas Caesar's staff were put ashore opposite Patara. Polygonus had sailed aboard his own galley; Caesar had seen no more of him. But he came to supervise the off loading of Caesar's staff into a lighter. "You can keep the lot except for one if you like," said the pirate leader. "One's enough to raise a ransom." "One is not appropriate for a man of my importance," said Caesar coldly. "I will keep three men only my body servant Demetrius and two scribes. If I have to wait a long time I shall need someone to copy out my poetry. Or perhaps I'll write a play. A comedy! Yes, I should have plenty of material for a comedy. Or perhaps a farce." "Who will lead your people?" "My freedman, Gaius Julius Burgundus." "The giant? What a man! He'd fetch a fortune as a slave." "He did in his day. He'll have to have his Nesaean horse," Caesar went on, tones fussy, "and the others must have their mounts too. They will have to keep some state, I insist upon that." "You can insist all you like, Your Majesty. The horses are good ones, I'll keep them." "You will not!" snapped Caesar. "You're getting fifty talents in ransom, so you can hand the horses over. I'll just keep Toes for myself unless your roads are paved? Toes isn't shod, so he can't be ridden on sealed roads." "You," said Polygonus, awed, "are beyond a joke!" "Put the horses ashore, Polygonus," said Caesar. The horses went ashore. Burgundus was acutely unhappy at leaving Caesar so poorly attended in the custody of these villains, but knew better than to argue. His job was to find the ransom. And then it was onward into eastern Lycia, hugging a coast as lonely and desolate as any in the world. No roads, hamlets or fishing villages, only the mighty mountains of the Solyma plunging from permanently snowcapped heights all the way into the water. The coves were upon them before their presence could be spied out, and then were only tiny indentations in some mountain flank, a sliver of reddish yellow sand running up against a reddish yellow cliff. But never a sign of a pirate settlement! Intriguing! Caesar remained without moving from the poop from the time his ship sailed past the river on which stood Patara and Xanthus, watching the coast slide by hour after hour. At sunset the two galleys and the merchantman they escorted veered inshore toward one of innumerable similar looking coves, and were run up on the sand until they beached. Only when he had leaped down and was walking on the shifting ground did Caesar see what no one could have from the water; the cliff at the back of the cove was actually two cliffs, a flange of one concealing the gap between them, and in behind them a big hollow bowl of low lying land. The pirate lair! "It's winter, and the fifty talents we'll get for you means we can afford to have a lovely holiday instead of sailing in the early spring storms," said Polygonus, joining Caesar as he strolled through the gap in the cliffs. His men were already rigging rollers beneath the prows of the galleys and the cargo vessel; while Caesar and Polygonus watched, the three ships were pulled up from the sand and between the cliffs, then brought to permanent rest propped on struts inside the hidden valley. "Do you always do this?" asked Caesar. "Not if we're going out again, but that would be unusual. While we're out on the prowl we don't come home." "A very nice arrangement you have here!" said Caesar, voice full of appreciation. The hollow bowl was perhaps a mile and a half in width and about half that in length, more or less oval in shape. At its terminus furthest from the cove, a thin waterfall tumbled from hidden heights above into a pool; the pool turned into a stream and meandered down to the cove, though it could not be seen from the water. The pirates (or Mother Earth) had gouged a thin channel for it at the very end of the sands, below the cliff. A well built and properly organized town filled most of the valley. Stone houses three and four storeys high lined gravel streets, several very large stone silos and warehouses stood opposite the place where the ships were grounded, and a marketplace with a temple provided a focus for communal life. "How many people do you have?" asked Caesar. "Including wives and mistresses and children and lovers for some of the men! about oh, a thousand plus five hundred. Then there are the slaves." "How many slaves?" "Two thousands, or thereabouts. We don't lift a finger for ourselves," said Polygonus proudly. "I'm surprised there's not an insurrection when the men are absent. Or are the women and the male lovers fearsome warriors?" The pirate chieftain laughed scornfully. "We're not fools, Senator! Every slave is chained permanently. And since there is no escape, why rise?" "That wouldn't stop me," said Caesar. "You'd be caught when we came back. There are no spare ships here to sail away in." "Perhaps it's I who would catch you when you came back." "Then I'm very glad that all of us will be here until your ransom arrives, Senator! You'll do no rising." "Oh!" said Caesar, looking disappointed. "Do you mean to say I am to provide you with fifty talents and not even be offered a little feminine diversion while I wait? I don't rise for men, but I'm rather famous with women." "I'll bet you are, if such is your preference," Polygonus said, chuckling. "Never fear! If you want women, we have them." "Do you have a library in this wonderful little haven?" "There are a few books around, though we're not scholars." The two men arrived outside a very large house. "This is my place. You'll stay here I prefer to keep you under my eye, I think. You'll have your own suite of rooms, of course." "A bath would be most welcome." "Since I have all the comforts of the Palatine, a bath you shall have, Senator." "I wish you'd call me Caesar." "Caesar it is." The suite of rooms was big enough to accommodate Demetrius and the two scribes as well as Caesar, who was soon luxuriating in a bath of exactly the right temperature, a little above tepid. "You'll have to shave me as well as pluck me for however many days we're here, Demetrius," said Caesar, combing the slight waves of his pale hair downward from the crown. He put down the mirror, made of chased gold encrusted with gems, shaking his head. "There's a fortune in this house." "They have stolen many fortunes," said Demetrius. "And no doubt stored much of the loot away in some of these many buildings. They're not all inhabited." And off drifted Caesar to join Polygonus in the dining room. The food was excellent and varied, the wine superb. "You keep a good cook," said Caesar. * "I see you eat abstemiously and drink no wine," said Polygonus. "I am passionate about nothing except my work." "What, not your women?" "Women," said Caesar, washing his hands, "are work." "I've never heard them called that before!" laughed Polygonus. "You're an odd fish, Caesar, to save your passions for work." He patted his belly and sniffed appreciatively at the contents of his rock crystal goblet. For myself, the only thing I like about piracy is the delightful life it brings me when I'm not sailing the sea. But most of all, I love good wine!" "I don't dislike the taste," said Caesar, "but I detest the sensation of losing my wits, and I notice that even half a cup of watered wine takes the edge off them." "But when you wake up, that's as good as you're going to feel all day!" cried Polygonus. Caesar grinned. "Not necessarily." "What do you mean?" "For instance, my dear fellow, I will wake completely sober and in my normal robust health on the morning of the day I sail in here with a fleet at my command, capture this place, and take all of you into my custody. I can assure you that when I look at you in chains, I will feel infinitely better than I did when I woke up! But even that is relative. For on the day I crucify you, Polygonus, I will feel as I have never felt before!" Polygonus roared with laughter. "Caesar, you are the most entertaining guest I've ever housed! I love your sense of humor!" "How terribly nice of you to say so. But you won't laugh when I crucify you, my friend." "It can't happen." "It will happen." A vision of gold and purple, hands loaded down with rings and chest flashing with necklaces, Polygonus lay back on his couch and laughed again. "Do you think I didn't see you standing on your ship watching the shore? Rubbish, Caesar, rubbish! No one can find his way back!" "You do." "That's because I've done it a thousand times. For the first hundred times I lost myself over and over again." "I can believe that. You're not nearly as intelligent as I." That cut: Polygonus sat up. Clever enough to have captured a Roman senator! And to bleed him of fifty talents!" "Your egg isn't hatched yet." "If this egg doesn't hatch, it will sit here and rot!" Shortly after this spirited exchange Polygonus flounced off, leaving his prisoner to find his own way back to his rooms. There a very pretty girl waited for him, a gift very much appreciated after Caesar sent her to Demetrius to make sure she was clean.
For forty days he remained in the pirate hideout; no one restricted his freedom to wander where he willed, talk to whomsoever he fancied. His fame spread from one end of the place to the other, and soon everyone knew that he believed he would sail back after he had been ransomed, would capture and crucify them all. "No, no, only the men!" said Caesar, smiling with great charm at a party of women come to quiz him. "How could I crucify beauty such as I see here?" "Then what will you do with us?" the most forward female asked, eyes inviting. "Sell you. How many women and children are here?" "A thousand." "A thousand. If the average price you fetch in whatever slave market I send you to is one thousand three hundred sesterces each, then I will have repaid my ransom to those obliged to find it, and made them a small profit. But you women and children are far more beautiful than one usually finds in a small town, so I expect an average price of two thousand sesterces each. That will give my ransomers a fat profit." The women dissolved into giggles; oh, he was lovely! In fact, everyone liked him enormously. He was so pleasant, so jolly and good humored, and he never displayed the slightest sign of fear or depression. He would joke with everyone, and joked so often about crucifying the men and selling the women and children into slavery that it became almost a constant entertainment. His eyes twinkled, his lips twitched, he thought it as hugely funny as they did. The first girl talked of his prowess as a lover, which meant that many of the women cast lures in his direction; but it didn't take the men long to find out that he was scrupulous about the women he selected never a woman belonging permanently to someone else. "The only men I cuckold are my peers," he would say in a lordly voice, looking every inch the aristocrat. "Friends?" they would ask, guffawing. "Enemies," Caesar would answer. "Well, and aren't we your enemies?" "My enemies, yes. But not my peers, you low collection of absolute scum!" he would say. At which point everybody would fall about laughing, loving the way he insulted them with such affectionate good humor. And then one afternoon as he dined with Polygonus, the pirate chieftain sighed. "I'll be sorry to lose you, Caesar." "Ah! The ransom has been found." "It will arrive with your freedman tomorrow." "How do you arrange that? I must presume he will be guided here, since you say the place cannot be found." "Oh, he has had some of my men with him the whole time. When the last talent was in the last bag, I received a message. They'll be here tomorrow about noon." "And then I can go?" "Yes." "What about my hired ship?" "It too." "The captain? His sailors?" "They'll be on board. You'll sail at dusk, westward." "So you included my hired ship in your price." "Certainly not!" said Polygonus, astonished. "The captain raised ten talents to buy back his ship and crew." "Ah!" breathed Caesar. "Another debt I must in honor pay." As predicted, Burgundus arrived at noon the following day, the fortieth of Caesar's imprisonment. "Cardixa will allow me to continue being the father of her sons," said Burgundus, wiping the tears from his eyes. "You look very well, Caesar." "They were considerate hosts. Who raised the ransom?" "Patara half, Xanthus half. They weren't happy, but they didn't dare refuse. Not so soon after Vatia." "They'll get their money back, and sooner than they think." The whole pirate town turned out to see Caesar off, some of the women openly weeping. As did Polygonus. "I'll never have another captive like you!" he sighed. "That's very true," said Caesar, smiling. "Your career as a pirate is over, my friend. I'll be back before the spring." As always, Polygonus found this exquisitely funny, and was still sniggering as he stood on the sandy little beach to watch the captain of Caesar's hired ship maneuver its bow into the west. Of light there was little. "Don't stop, Captain!" the pirate leader shouted. "If you do, you'll have my escort up your arse!" And out from behind the mountain flank to the east it came, a hemiolia capable of keeping up with any craft that sailed. But by dawn it wasn't there, and the river upon which stood Patara lay ahead. "Now to soothe some financial fears," said Caesar. He looked at the captain. "By the way, I will repay you the ten talents you had to outlay to ransom your ship and crew." Obviously the captain didn't believe it lay in Caesar's power to do this. "An unfortunate voyage!" he mourned. "I predict that when it's over you'll sail back to Byzantium a very happy man," said Caesar. "Now get me ashore." His visit was very quickly over, he was back and waiting to leave on the following day before all the horses and mules had been loaded aboard. With him was the rest of his entourage. He looked brisk. "Come, Captain, hustle yourself!" "To Rhodus?" "To Rhodus, of course." That voyage took three days, calling at Telmessus on the first night and Caunus on the second. Caesar refused to allow his animals to be off loaded in either place. "I'm in too big a hurry they'll survive," he said. "Oh, my luck! Favored by Fortune as always! Thanks to my career as a raiser of fleets, I know exactly where to go and whom to see when we reach Rhodus!" He did indeed, with the result that he had collected the men he wanted to see not two hours after his ship had tied up. "I need a fleet of ten triremes and about five hundred good men," he said to the group of Rhodians congregated in the offices of the harbormaster. "For what reason?" asked the young admiral Lysander. To accompany me back to the headquarters of the pirate chief Polygonus. I intend to capture the place." "Polygonus? You'll never find his lair!" "I'll find it," said Caesar. "Come, let me have the fleet! There will be some rich pickings for Rhodes." Neither his enthusiasm nor his confidence persuaded the men of Rhodes to agree to this wild scheme; it was Caesar's authority that earned him his ten triremes and five hundred soldiers. They knew him of old, and some of Vatia's clout still clung to him. Though King Zenicetes had burned his eyrie on top of Mount Termessus when Vatia arrived to capture it, Rhodian respect for Vatia had grown a thousandfold; unperturbed at what seemed the loss of untold plunder, Vatia had simply waited for the ashes to cool, then sieved the lot, and so retrieved the melted precious metals. If Vatia could do that, then his erstwhile legate, Caesar, might be likely to have some of Vatia's style. Therefore, the men of Rhodes concluded, Caesar was worth a bet. At the mouth of Patara's river the fleet moored on the last night before the search for Polygonus's lair would begin; Caesar went into the city and commandeered every empty merchantman to follow in the Rhodian wake. And all the next day he stood on the poop of his hired ship, eyes riveted on the cove scalloped coast sliding by for hour after hour. "You see," he said to his captain, "before Polygonus left Patara I knew enough from listening to the pirates talk to have an idea what the coves were going to look like. So in my mind I set a definition of what I was going to call a cove, and what I would not. Then I simply counted every cove." "I was looking for landmarks rocks in the sea shaped like this or that, an oddly shaped mountain that sort of thing," said the captain, and sighed. "I am lost already!" "Landmarks are deceptive, a man's memory of them treacherous. Give me numbers any day," said Caesar, smiling. "What if you've missed your count?" "I haven't." Nor had he. The cove wherein the five hundred soldiers from Rhodes landed looked exactly like every other. The fleet had lain all night to the west of it, undetected, though as it turned out Polygonus had set no watches. All four of his war galleys were drawn up inside the hidden bowl; he deemed himself safe. But the sun had scarcely risen before he and his men were standing in the chains they had used to confine their slaves. "You can't say I didn't warn you," said Caesar to Polygonus, wearing a stout set of manacles. "I'm not crucified yet, Roman!" "You will be. You will be!" "How did you find this place?" "Arithmetic. I counted every cove between Patara and here." Caesar turned, beckoning to the Rhodian admiral Lysander. "Come, let's see what sort of fortune Polygonus has salted away." Many fortunes, as it turned out. Not only were the granaries almost full, but of other foodstuffs there were enough to feed all of Xanthus and Patara for the rest of that winter and spring. One big building was crammed with priceless fabrics and purples, with citrus wood tables of rarest grain, with golden couches and the finest of chairs. Another building contained chest after chest of coins and jewelry. Much of the jewelry was Egyptian in make, rich with faience, beryl, carnelian, sard, onyx, lapis lazuli and turquoise. One small chest when opened revealed several thousand ocean pearls, some of them as big as pigeon's eggs, others in rare colors. "I'm not truly surprised," said Lysander. "Polygonus has been raiding these sea lanes for twenty years, and he's a well known hoarder. What I didn't realize was that he must also have been raiding the shipping between Cyprus and Egypt." Because of the ocean pearls and the jewelry?'' "One doesn't see such stuff elsewhere." And the Alexandrians on Cyprus had the gall to tell me that their shipping was safe!" "They dislike outsiders knowing their weaknesses, Caesar." "That, I soon understood." Caesar huffed, pleased. "Well, Lysander, let's divide the spoils." "Strictly speaking, Caesar, we are your agents. Provided you pay us for the hire of men and ships, the spoils belong to you," said Lysander. "Some but by no means all, my friend. I want no questions asked of me in the House that I cannot answer with an unmistakable ring of truth. So I will take a thousand talents in coin for the Treasury of Rome, five hundred talents more in coin for myself, and a handful of these pearls if I may choose whichever ones I fancy. I suggest that the few remaining coins and all the jewelry go to Rhodes as her share. The warehouse of furniture and fabrics you can sell, but I would like the sum realized used to build a temple in Rhodus to honor my ancestress, Aphrodite." Lysander blinked. "Most generous, Caesar! Why not take the whole chest of pearls for yourself? It would keep you free from money worries for the rest of your life." "No, Lysander, I'll take just one handful. I like wealth as much as the next man, but too much might turn me into a miser." Caesar bent to run his hands through the pearls, picking out this one and that: twenty the dark and iridescent colors of the scum on the Palus Asphaltites in Palestina; a pearl the size of a strawberry that was the same color and shape as a strawberry; a dozen the color of the harvest moon; one giant with purple in it; and six perfect silver cream ones. "There! I can't sell them, you know, without all of Rome wondering where they came from. But I can give them away to certain women when I need to." "Your fame will spread, to be so unavaricious." "I want no word of it spoken, Lysander, and I do mean that! My continence has absolutely nothing to do with lack of avarice. It has to do with my reputation in Rome, and with a vow I made that I would never lay myself open to charges of extortion or the theft of Rome's property." He shrugged. "Besides, the more money I have, the faster I'll throw it away." "And Patara and Xanthus?" "Receive the women and children to sell into slavery, plus all the food stored here. They should get back far more than they had to find to ransom me from the slave sales, and the food is a bonus. But with your permission I will take ten more talents for the captain of my ship. He too had to pay a ransom." One hand on Lysander's shoulder, Caesar guided him out of the building. ' The ships from Xanthus and Patara will be here by dusk. May I suggest that you put Rhodus's share on board your galleys before they arrive? I'll have my clerks catalogue everything. Send the money for Rome to Rome under escort." "What do you want done with the pirate men?" Load them on board Pataran or Xanthian ships, and give them to me to take to Pergamum. I'm not a curule magistrate, so I have not the power to execute in the provinces. That means I must take the men to the governor in Pergamum and ask him for permission to do what I promised I would do crucify them." "Then I'll put Rome's share on board my own galleys. It's a small enough cargo. The moment the seas are safe early summer, perhaps I'll send the money to Rome from Rhodus." Lysander thought of something else. "I'll send four of my ships with you to Pergamum as an escort. You've brought Rhodes so much wealth that Rhodes will be delighted to oblige you in everything." "Just remember that I did! Who knows? One day I may need to call in the favor," said Caesar. The pirates were being led off toward the beach; Polygonus, last in the endless line, gave Caesar a grave salute. "What luxury loving fellows they were," said Caesar, shaking his head. "I had always thought of pirates as dirty, unschooled and in love with fighting. But these men were soft." "Of course," said Lysander. "Their savagery is overrated. How often do they need to fight for what they pillage, Caesar? Rarely. When they do fight it is under the supervision of their own admirals, who are remarkably skilled. The smaller pirates like Polygonus don't attack convoys. They prey on unescorted merchantmen. The pirates who sail in fleets are mostly to be found around Crete. But when you live behind the walls of the Solyma like Polygonus, you tend to regard yourself as permanently secure literally an independent kingdom." "Rhodes could do more than it does to arrest the pirate menace," said Caesar. But Lysander shook his head, chuckled. "Blame Rome for that! It was Rome insisted we reduce the size of our fleets when Rome took on the burden of ruling the eastern end of our great sea. She thought she could police everything, including the shipping lanes. But she's too parsimonious to spend the necessary money. Rhodes is under her direction these days. So we do as we are bidden. If we were to strike out independently with sufficient naval power to eradicate the pirates, Rome would begin to think that she was hatching her own Mithridates." And that, reflected Caesar, was inarguable.
Marcus Junius Juncus was not in Pergamum when Caesar reached the river Caicus and moored in the city port; it was nearing the end of March by Roman reckoning, which meant that winter was not yet over, though the voyage up the coast had been uneventful. The city of Pergamum looked magnificent upon its lofty perch, but even from the lowlands of the river traces of snow and ice could be seen upon temple roofs and palace eaves. "Where is the governor? In Ephesus?" asked Caesar when he found the proquaestor, Quintus Pompeius (closer by blood to the branch Rufus than to Pompey's branch). "No, he's in Nicomedia," said Pompeius curtly. "I was just on my way to join him, actually. You're lucky to catch any of us here, we've been so busy in Bithynia. I came back to fetch some cooler clothes for the governor we didn't expect Nicomedia to be warmer than Pergamum." "Oh, it always is," said Caesar gravely, and managed to refrain from asking the proquaestor of Asia Province did he not have more urgent things to do than fetch cooler clothing for Juncus? "Well, Quintus Pompeius," he went on affably, "if you like, I'll carry the governor's clothing. I'm giving you a little work to do before you can leave. See those ships there?" "I see them," said Pompeius, none too pleased at being told by a younger man that he would have to do this, and not do that. There are some five hundred pirates on board who need to be incarcerated somewhere for a few days. I'm off to Bithynia to obtain formal permission from Marcus Junius to crucify them." "Pirates? Crucify?" "That's right. I captured a pirate stronghold in Lycia with the aid of ten ships of the Rhodian navy, I hasten to add." "Then you can stay here and look after your own wretched prisoners!" snapped Pompeius. "Ill ask the governor!" "I'm very sorry, Quintus Pompeius, but that's not the way it's done," said Caesar gently. "I am a privatus, and I was a privatus when I captured the men. I must see the governor in person. Lycia is a part of his province, so I must explain the circumstances myself. That is the law." The tussle of wills was prolonged a few moments more, but there was never any doubt as to who would win; off went Caesar in a fast Rhodian galley to Nicomedia, leaving Pompeius behind to deal with the pirate prisoners. And, thought Caesar sadly as he cooled his heels in a small palace anteroom until the busy Marcus Junius Juncus had time to see him, things had already changed almost beyond recognition. The gilding was still there, the frescoes and other objects of art which could not be removed without leaving obvious damage behind, but certain familiar and beloved statues were gone from hallways and chambers, as were several paintings. The light was fading when Juncus flounced into the room; evidently he had paused to eat dinner before releasing a fellow senator from his long wait. "Caesar! How good to see you! What is it?" the governor asked, holding out his hand. "Ave, Marcus Junius. You've been busy." "That's right, you know this palace like the look of your hand, don't you?" The words were smooth enough, but the inference was plain. "Since it was I sent you word when King Nicomedes died, you must know that." "But you didn't have the courtesy to wait here for me." I am a privatus, Marcus Junius, I would only have been in your way. A governor is best left to his own devices when he has a task to do as important as incorporating a new province into Rome's flock," said Caesar. "Then what are you doing here now?" Juncus eyed his visitor with intense dislike, remembering their little exchanges in the Murder Court and who had mostly won them. "I was captured by pirates off Pharmacussa two months ago." "Well, that happens to many. I presume that you managed to ransom yourself, since you're standing before me. But there's nothing I can do to help you recover the ransom, Caesar. However, if you insist I will have my staff enter a complaint with the Senate in Rome." "I am able to do that myself," said Caesar pleasantly. "I am not here to complain, Marcus Junius. I'm here to request your permission to crucify five hundred captured pirates." Juncus stared. "What?" "As you so perceptively perceived, I ransomed myself. Then in Rhodus I requisitioned a small fleet and some soldiers, went back to the pirate stronghold, and captured it." "You had no right to do that! I am the governor, it was my job!" snapped Juncus. By the time I had sent word to Pergamum I have just come from Pergamum, where I left my prisoners and a message had been forwarded to you here in Nicomedia, Marcus Junius, the winter would have been over, and Polygonus the pirate vanished from his base to do his campaigning. I may be a privatus, but I acted as all members of the Senate of Rome are expected to I proceeded to ensure that Rome's enemies did not escape Rome's retribution." This swift retort gave Juncus pause; he had to search for the proper answer. "Then you are to be commended, Caesar." "So I think." "And you're asking me for permission to crucify five hundred good strong men? I can't do that! Your captives are now mine. I shall sell them into slavery." "I pledged them my word that they would be crucified," said Caesar, lips tightening. "You pledged them your word?" asked Juncus, genuinely aghast. "They're outlaws and thieves!" "It would not matter to me if they were barbarians and apes, Marcus Junius! I swore that I would crucify them. I am a Roman and my word is my bond. I must fulfill my word." "The promise was not yours to give! As you've pointed out, you're a privatus. I do agree that you acted correctly in moving to ensure that Rome's enemies did not escape retribution. But it is my prerogative to say what will happen to prisoners in my sphere of auctoritas. They will be sold as slaves. And that is my last word on the subject." "I see," said Caesar, eyes glassy. He got up. "Just a moment!" cried Juncus. Caesar faced him again. "Yes?" I presume there was booty?'' "Yes." "Then where is it? In Pergamum?" "No." "You can't keep it for yourself!" I did not. Most of it went to the Rhodians, who provided the manpower and seapower for the exercise. Some went to the citizens of Xanthus and Patara, who provided the fifty talents for my ransom. My share I donated to Aphrodite, asking that the Rhodians build a temple in her honor. And Rome's share is on its way to Rome." "And what about my share?" "I wasn't aware you were entitled to one, Marcus Junius." "I am the governor of the province!" The haul was rich, but not that rich. Polygonus was no King Zenicetes." "How much did you send to Rome?" "A thousand talents in coin." "Then there was enough." "For Rome, yes. For you, no," said Caesar gently. "As governor of the province, it was my job to send Rome's share to the Treasury!" "Minus how much?" "Minus the governor's share!" "Then I suggest," said Caesar, smiling, "that you apply to the Treasury for the governor's share." "I will! Never think I will not!" "I never would, Marcus Junius." "I will complain to the Senate about your arrogance, Caesar! You have taken the governor's duties upon yourself!" "That is true," said Caesar, walking out. "And just as well. Otherwise the Treasury would be a thousand talents the poorer."
He hired a horse and rode overland to Pergamum through a melting landscape, Burgundus and Demetrius hard put to keep up. On and on without pausing to rest he rode, his anger fueling his tired head and aching muscles. Just seven days after leaving Pergamum he was back and two full days ahead of the Rhodian galley, still traversing the Hellespont. "All done!" he cried cheerfully to the proquaestor Pompeius. "I hope you've made the crosses! I haven't any time to waste." "Made the crosses?" asked Pompeius, astonished. "Why would I cause crosses to be made for men Marcus Junius will sell?" "He was inclined that way at first," said Caesar lightly, "but after I had explained that I had given my word they would be crucified, he understood. So let's start making those crosses! I was due to commence studying with Apollonius Molon two months ago. Time flies, Pompeius, so up and into it!" The bewildered proquaestor found himself hustled as Juncus never did, but could not move quickly enough to satisfy Caesar, who ended in buying timber from a yard and then set the pirates to making their own crosses. "And make them properly, you scum, for hang on them you will! There's no worse fate than lingering for days because a cross is not well made enough to hasten death." "Why didn't the governor elect to sell us as slaves?" asked Polygonus, who was unhandy with tools and therefore not progressing in his cross making. "I was sure he would." "Then you were wrong," said Caesar, taking the bolts from him and beginning to fasten crosspiece to tree. "How did you ever manage to forge a successful career as a pirate, Polygonus? You are hopelessly incompetent!" "Some men," said Polygonus, leaning on a spade, "make very successful careers out of being incompetent." Caesar straightened, cross bolted. "Not I!" he said. "I realized that some time ago," said Polygonus, sighing. "Go on, start digging!" What are those for?'' Polygonus asked, allowing Caesar to take his spade while he himself pointed at a pile of wooden pins. "Wedges," grunted Caesar, soil flying. "When this hole is deep enough to take the weight of cross and man together, your cross will be dropped in it. But the earth here is too loose to fix it firmly upright, so we'll hammer wedges into the ground all around the base. Then when the job's done and you're dead, your cross will come out easily the moment the wedges are removed. That way, the governor can save all these wonderful instruments of an ignominious death for the next lot of pirates I capture." "Don't you get out of breath?" "I have sufficient breath to work and talk at the same time. Come, Polygonus, help me drop your final resting place in the hole.... There!" Caesar stood back. "Now shove one of the wedges into the hole the cross is leaning." He put down the spade and picked up a mallet. No, no, on the other side! Toward the lean! You're no engineer, are you?" "I may not be an engineer," said Polygonus, grinning, "but I have engineered my executioner into making my cross!" Caesar laughed. "Do you think I'm not aware of that, friend? However, there is a price to pay. As any good pirate should know." Amusement fled; Polygonus stared. "A price?" "The rest will have their legs broken. They'll die quickly. You, on the other hand, I will provide with a little rest for your feet so there's not too much weight dragging you down. It is going to take you days to die, Polygonus!" When the Rhodian galley which had followed Caesar from Nicomedia rowed into the river leading to the port of Pergamum, the oarsmen gaped and shivered. Men died even by execution in Rhodes, but Roman style justice was not a part of Rhodian life; Rhodes was Friend and Ally, not part of a Roman province. So the sight of five hundred crosses in a field lying fallow between the port and the sea was as strange as it was monstrous. A field of dead men all save one, the leader, whose head was adorned with the irony of a diadem. He still moaned and cried out. Quintus Pompeius had remained in Pergamum, unwilling to leave until Caesar was gone. It was the sight of those crosses, as if a forest had been devised wherein no tree differed from its fellows in the slightest degree. Crucifixions happened this was the death meted out to a slave, never to a free man but never en masse. Yet there in neat rows, uniformly spaced apart, stood a regimented death. And the man who could organize and achieve it in such a short time was not a man to ignore. Or leave in charge of Pergamum, however unofficially. Therefore Quintus Pompeius waited until Caesar's fleet sailed for Rhodes and Patara.
The proquaestor arrived in Nicomedia to find the governor elated; Juncus had found a cache of gold bullion in a dungeon beneath the palace and appropriated it for himself, unaware that Caesar and Oradaltis had put it there to trap him. "Well, Pompeius, you've worked very hard to incorporate Bithynia into Asia Province," said Juncus magnanimously, "so I shall accede to your request. You may call yourself Bithynicus." As this raised Pompeius (Bithynicus) to a state of exaltation almost equal to the governor's, they reclined to eat dinner in a positive glow of well being. It was Juncus who brought up the subject of Caesar, though not until the last course had been picked over. "He's the most arrogant mentula I've ever encountered," he said, lips peeled back. "Denied me a share of the spoils, then had the temerity to ask for my permission to crucify five hundred hale and hearty men who will at least fetch me some compensation when I sell them in the slave market!" Pompeius stared at him, jaw dropped. "Sell them?" "What's the matter?" "But you ordered the pirates crucified, Marcus Junius!" "I did not!" Pompeius (Bithynicus) shriveled visibly. Cacat!'' "What's the matter?" Juncus repeated, stiffening. "Caesar arrived back in Pergamum seven days after he had gone to see you and told me that you had consented to his crucifying the men. I admit I was a bit surprised, but it never occurred to me that he was lying! Marcus Junius, he crucified the lot of them!" "He wouldn't dare!" "He did dare! With such complete assurance so relaxed! He pushed me around like a bond servant! I even said to him that I was surprised to hear you'd consented, and did he look uncomfortable or guilty? No! Truly, Marcus Junius, I believed every word he said! Nor did you send a message to the contrary," he added craftily. Juncus was beyond anger; he wept. "Those men were worth two million sesterces on the market! Two million, Pompeius ! And he sent a thousand talents to the Treasury in Rome without even reporting to me first, or offering me a share! Now I'm going to have to apply to the Treasury for a share, and you know what a circus that is! I'll be lucky if the decision comes through before my first great grandchild is born! While he the fellator! must have appropriated thousands of talents for himself! Thousands!" "I doubt it," said Pompeius (Bithynicus), trying to look anywhere but at the desolate Juncus. "I had some speech with the senior captain of the Rhodian ships, and it appears that Caesar really did give all the loot to Rhodes, Xanthus and Patara. The haul was rich, but not an Egyptian treasure. The Rhodian believed Caesar took very little for himself, and that seems to be the common belief among all those concerned. One of his own freedmen said Caesar liked money well enough, but was too clever to prize it ahead of his political skin, and informed me with a sly smile that Caesar would never find himself arraigned in the Extortion Court. It also appears that the man had pledged the pirates he would crucify them while he was living at their stronghold waiting to be ransomed. It may be difficult to prove he took a thing from the pirate spoils, Marcus Junius." Juncus dried his eyes, blew his nose. "I can't prove he took anything in Nicomedia or elsewhere in Bithynia, either. But he did! He must have! I've known virtuous men in my time, and I would swear he isn't among them, Pompeius! He's too sure of himself to be virtuous. And far too arrogant. He acts as if he owns the world!" "According to the pirate leader who thought Caesar very strange he acted as if he owned the world while he was held a prisoner. Used to sweep around insulting everybody with high good humor! The ransom was levied at twenty talents, which apparently outraged Caesar! He was worth at least fifty talents, he said and made them set the ransom at fifty talents!" "So that's why he said fifty talents! I noticed it at the time, but I was too angry with him to take him up on it, and then I forgot." Juncus shook his head. "That probably explains him, Pompeius. The man's mad! Fifty talents is a censor's ransom. Yes, I believe the man is mad." "Or perhaps he wanted to frighten Xanthus and Patara into paying up quickly," said Pompeius. "No! He's mad, and the madness comes out in self importance. He's never been any different." A bitter look descended upon Juncus's countenance. "But his motives are irrelevant. All I want is to make him pay for what he's done to me! Oh, I don't believe it! Two million sesterces!"
If Caesar suffered any misgivings about the accumulating enmity his activities were provoking, he concealed them perfectly; when his ship finally docked in Rhodus he paid off the captain with a most generous bonus, hired a comfortable but not pretentious house on the outskirts of the city, and settled to studying with the great Apollonius Molon. Since this big and independent island at the foot of Asia Province was a crossroads for the eastern end of the Middle Sea, it was constantly bombarded with news and gossip, so there was no need for any visiting Roman student to feel cut off from Rome or from developments in any part of the Roman world. Thus Caesar soon learned of Pompey's letter to the Senate and the Senate's reaction including the championship of Lucullus; and he learned that last year's senior consul, Lucius Octavius, had died in Tarsus soon after he had arrived there early in March to govern Cilicia, It was too soon to know what the Senate planned to do about a replacement. The testamentary gift of Bithynia had pleased everyone in Rome from highest to lowest, but, Caesar learned in Rhodes, not everyone had wanted this new land to be a part of Asia Province, and the battle was not over just because Juncus had been ordered to go ahead with incorporation. Both Lucullus and Marcus Cotta, now the consuls, were in favor of making Bithynia a separate province with a separate governor, and Marcus Cotta had his eye on the post in the following year. Of more interest to the Rhodians, however, was more local news; what was happening in Pontus and Cappadocia held an importance for them that Rome and Spain could not. It was said that after King Tigranes had invaded Cappadocia four years ago, not one citizen had been left in Eusebeia Mazaca, so many had the King deported to resettle in Tigranocerta; the Cappadocian king who had not impressed Caesar when he saw him had been living in exile in Alexandria since the invasion, giving as his reason for this peculiar choice of location the fact that Tarsus was too close to Tigranes, and Rome too expensive for his purse. There were plenty of rumors that King Mithridates was busy mobilizing a new and vast army in Pontus, so angry had the King been at the news that Bithynia had fallen to Rome's lot in a will; but no one had any details, and Mithridates was still definitely well within his own borders. Marcus Junius Juncus came in for his share of gossip too. About him it was being said that he had alienated some of the most important Roman citizens in Bithynia particularly those resident in Heracleia on the Euxine and that formal complaints had been sent off to the Senate in Rome alleging that Juncus was plundering the country of its greatest treasures. Then at the beginning of June the whole of Asia Province jolted, shuddered; King Mithridates was on the march, had overrun Paphlagonia and reached Heracleia, just on the Bithynian border. Word had flown to Rome that the King of Pontus intended to take Bithynia for himself. Blood, birth and proximity all dictated that Bithynia belonged to Pontus, not to Rome, and King Mithridates would not lie down while Rome usurped Bithynia! But at Heracleia the vast Pontic horde stopped short, and there remained; as usual, having thrown down the challenge to Rome, Mithridates had balked and now lay still, waiting to see what Rome would do. Marcus Junius Juncus and Quintus Pompeius (Bithynicus) fled back to Pergamum, where they spent more time writing lengthy reports to the Senate than attempting to ready Asia Province for another war against the King of Pontus. With no governor in Cilicia thanks to the death of Lucius Octavius, the two legions stationed in Tarsus made no move to march to the aid of Asia Province, and Juncus did not summon them. The two legions of the Fimbriani stationed in Ephesus and Sardes were recalled to Pergamum, but were moved no closer to Bithynia than Pergamum. Speculation had it that Juncus intended to defend his own skin, not Bithynia. In Rhodus, Caesar listened to the gossip but made no effort to journey to Pergamum, more concerned, it seemed, at the talk that Asia Province wanted no more truck with Mithridates but was not willing to fight him either unless the governor issued firm orders. And the governor made no attempt to issue firm orders about a thing. The harvest would begin in Quinctilis in the southern part of the province and by Sextilis the northern parts would also be reaping. Yet Juncus did nothing, made no move to commandeer grain against the possibility of war. Word came during Sextilis that both the consuls, Lucullus and Marcus Cotta, had been authorized by the Senate to deal with Mithridates; suddenly Bithynia was a separate province and given to Marcus Cotta, while Cilicia went to Lucullus. No one could say what the fate of Asia Province would be, its governor only a praetor and caught between the two consuls of the year. Outranked by Lucullus and Marcus Cotta, Juncus would have to do as he was told. But he was not a Lucullus man; he wasn't efficient nor beyond reproach. Things boded ill for Juncus. Not many days later Caesar received a letter from Lucullus's brother, Varro Lucullus.
Rome is in an uproar, as you can imagine. I write to you, Caesar, because you are out of things at the moment, because I need to air my thoughts on paper and am not a diarist, and because I can think of no one I would rather write to. I am doomed to remain here in Rome no matter what happens short of the deaths of both the consuls, and since the senior consul is my brother and the junior consul is your uncle, neither of us will want that. Why am I doomed to remain in Rome? I have been elected senior consul for next year! Isn't that excellent? My junior colleague is Gaius Cassius Longinus a good man, I think. Some local news first. You have probably heard that our mutual friend Gaius Verres succeeded in smarming up to the electorate and the lot officials so successfully that he is urban praetor. But have you heard how he managed to turn that usually thankless job into a profit making one? After the plutocrat Lucius Minucius Basilus died without leaving a will behind him, Verres had to hear the plea of his closest relative to inherit. This closest relative is a nephew, one Marcus Satrius. But guess who contested? None other than Hortensius and Marcus Crassus, each of whom had rented a rich property from Basilus during his lifetime. They now came before Verres and alleged that Basilus would have left them these properties had he made a will! And Verres upheld their claims! Off went Hortensius and Marcus Crassus the richer, off went wretched Satrius the poorer. As for Gaius Verres well, you don't think he found for Hortensius and Marcus Crassus out of the goodness of his heart, do you? Of course we have the annual nuisance among our ten tribunes of the plebs. This year's specimen is a peculiar man, Lucius Quinctius. Fifty years old and self made, likes to dress when not obliged to be togate in a full length robe of Tyrian purple, and full of detestable affectations of speech and manner. The college had not been in office for one full day before Quinctius was haranguing the Forum crowds about restoring the full powers of the tribunate, and in the House he concentrated his venom upon my brother. Quinctius is now very quiet and well behaved. My dear brother Lucullus dealt with him beautifully, using a two pronged attack (as he put it). The first prong consisted in throwing last year's tribune of the plebs, Quintus Opimius, to the dogs the dogs being Catulus and Hortensius, who prosecuted Opimius for constantly exceeding his authority and succeeded in having him fined a sum exactly equal to his whole fortune. Opimius has been obliged to retire from public life, a ruined man. The second prong consisted in Lucullus's sweetly reasonable and relentless whispering in Quinctius's ear, to the effect that if Quinctius didn't shut up and would not tone down his behavior, he too would be thrown to Catulus and Hortensius, and he too would be fined a sum exactly equal to his whole fortune. The exercise took some time, but it worked. In case you think you are gone and absolutely forgotten, you are not, my dear Caesar. All of Rome is talking about the little flirtation you had with some pirates, and how you crucified them against the orders of the governor. What, I hear you ask, it's known in Rome already? Yes, it is! And no, Juncus didn't talk. His proquaestor, that Pompeius who has actually had the effrontery to add Bithynicus to his utterly undistinguished name, wrote the story to everyone. Apparently his intention was to make Juncus the hero, but such is popular caprice that everyone even Catulus! deems you the hero. In fact, there was some talk about giving you a Naval Crown to add to your Civic Crown, but Catulus was not prepared to go that far, and reminded the Conscript Fathers that you were a privatus, therefore were not eligible for military decorations. Pirates have been the subject of much discussion in the House this year, but please put your mental emphasis on the word discussion. Whether it is because Philippus seems in the grip of a permanent lethargy, or because Cethegus has largely absented himself from meetings, or because Catulus and Hortensius are more interested in the courts than in the Senate these days, I do not know: but the fact remains that this year's House has proven itself a slug. Make a decision? Oh, impossible! Speed things up? Oh, impossible! Anyway, in January our praetor Marcus Antonius agitated to be given a special commission to eradicate piracy from Our Sea. His chief reason for demanding that this job be given to him appears to lie in the fact that his father, the Orator, was given a similar command thirty years ago. There can be no doubt that piracy has grown beyond a joke, and that in this time of grain shortages we must protect shipments of grain from the east to Italy. However, most of us were inclined to laugh at the thought of Antonius not a monster like brother Hybrida, admittedly, but an amiable and feckless idiot, certainly being given a huge command like eradicating piracy from one end of Our Sea to its other. Beyond interminable discussion, nothing happened. Save that Metellus the eldest son of the Billy goat Caprarius (he is a praetor this year) also thought it a good idea, and began to lobby for the same job. When Metellus's lobbying became a threat to Antonius, Antonius went to see guess who? Give up? Praecia! You know, the mistress of Cethegus. She has Cethegus absolutely under her dainty foot so much so that when the lobbyists need Cethegus these days, they rush round to pay court to Praecia. One can only assume that Praecia must harbor a secret craving for big, beefy cretins more mentula than mente because it ended in Antonius's getting the job! Little Goat retired from the arena maimed in self esteem, but will live to fight again another day, I predict. Cethegus was so lavish in his support that Antonius got an unlimited imperium on the water and a regular proconsular imperium on the land. He was told to recruit one legion of land troops though his fleets, he was told, he would have to requisition from the port cities in whatever area he happens to be cruising unlimitedly. This year, the western end of Our Sea. If the complaints the House is beginning to get from the port cities of the west are anything to go by, then it would seem that Marcus Antonius is better at raising sums of money than eradicating pirates. So far, his pirate tally is considerably less than yours! He fought an engagement off the coast of Campania which he claimed as a great victory, but we have seen no proof like ship's beaks or prisoners. I believe he has shaken his fist at Lipara and roared lustily at the Baleares, but the east coast of Spain remains firmly in the hands of Sertorius's pirate allies, and Liguria is untamed. Most of his time and energy (according to the complaints) is expended upon riotous and luxurious living. Next year, he informs the Senate in his latest dispatch, he will transfer himself to the eastern end of Our Sea, to Gytheum in the Peloponnese. From this base he says he will tackle Crete, where all the big pirate fleets harbor. My thought is that Gytheum is reputed to have an unparalleled climate and some very beautiful women. Now to Mithridates. The news that King Nicomedes had actually died failed to reach Rome until March delayed by winter storms, it seems. Of course the will was safely lodged with the Vestals and Juncus had already received his instructions to proceed with incorporation of Bithynia into the Asia Province the moment you informed him the King was dead, so the House presumed all was in train. But hard on the heels of this news came a formal letter from King Mithridates, who said that Bithynia belonged to Nysa, the aged daughter of King Nicomedes, and that he was marching to put Nysa on the throne. No one took it seriously; the daughter hadn't been heard of in years. We sent Mithridates a stiff note refusing to countenance any pretender on the Bithynian throne, and ordering him to stay within his own borders. Usually when we prod him he behaves like a snail, so no one thought any more about the matter. Except for my brother, that is. His nose, refined by all those years of living and fighting in the east, sniffed coming war. He even tried to speak about the possibility in the House, but was not howled down more snored out. His province for next year was Italian Gaul. When he drew it in the New Year's Day lots he was delighted; his worst fear until that moment had been that the Senate would take Nearer Spain off Pompeius and give it to him! Which was why he always spoke up so vigorously for Pompeius in the House oh, he didn't want Nearer Spain! Anyway, when at the end of April we learned that Lucius Octavius had died in Tarsus, my brother asked that he be given Cilicia as his province, and that Italian Gaul be given to one of the praetors. There was going to be war with King Mithridates, he insisted. And what was senatorial reaction to these forebodings? Lethargy! Smothered yawns! You would have thought that Mithridates had never massacred eighty thousand of us in Asia Province not fifteen years ago! Or taken the whole place over until Sulla threw him out. The Conscript Fathers discussed, discussed, discussed.... But could come to no conclusions. When the news came that Mithridates was on the march and had arrived at Heracleia with three hundred thousand men, you'd think something would have happened! Well, nothing did. The House couldn't agree what ought to be done, let alone who ought to be sent east at one stage Philippus got up and suggested the command in the east should be given to Pompeius Magnus! Who (to give him his due) is far more interested in retrieving his tattered reputation in Spain. Finally my poor Lucullus did something he despised himself for doing he went to see Praecia. As you can quite imagine, his approach to the woman was very different from Marcus Antonius's! Lucullus is far too stiff necked to smarm, and far too proud to beg. So instead of expensive presents, languishing sighs, or protestations of undying love and lust, he was very crisp and businesslike. The Senate, he said, was comprised of fools from one back tier clear to the other, and he was fed up wasting his breath there. Whereas he had always heard that Praecia was as formidably intelligent as she was well educated. Did she see why it was necessary that someone be sent to deal with Mithridates as soon as possible and did she see that the best person for the job was Lucius Licinius Lucullus? If she did see both of these facts, would she please kick Cethegus up the arse to do something about the situation? Apparently she loved being told she was more intelligent and better educated than anyone in the Senate (one presumes she lumped Cethegus in with the rest!), for she must have given Cethegus a thundering great kick up the arse things happened in the House immediately! Italian Gaul was put aside to be given to a praetor (as yet not named), and Cilicia awarded to my brother. With orders to proceed to the east during his consulship, and to take over as governor of Asia Province on the first day of next year without relinquishing Cilicia. Juncus was supposed to stay on in Asia Province, prorogued yet again, but that was canceled. He is to come home at the end of the year; there have been so many complaints about his conduct in poor Bithynia that the House agreed unanimously to recall him. There is only one legion of troops in Italy. Its men were being recruited and trained to be sent to Spain, but will now go east with Lucullus. The kick Praecia administered to Cethegus was so hard that the Conscript Fathers voted Lucullus the sum of seventy two million sesterces to assemble fleets, whereas Marcus Antonius wasn't offered any money at all. Marcus Cotta was appointed governor of the new Roman province of Bithynia, but he has Bithynia's navy at his disposal, so is quite well off for ships he wasn't offered any money either! What have we come to, Caesar, when a woman has more power than the consuls? My dear brother covered himself in glory by declining the seventy two millions. He said that the provisions Sulla had made in Asia Province would be adequate for his needs he would levy his fleets upon the various cities and districts of Asia Province, then deduct the cost from the tributes. Since money is almost nonexistent, the Conscript Fathers voted my brother their sincere thanks. It is now the end of Quinctilis, and Lucullus and Marcus Cotta will be leaving for the east in less than a month. Luckily under Sulla's constitution the consuls elect outrank the urban praetor, so Cassius and I basically will be in charge of Rome, rather than the awful Gaius Verres. The expedition will sail all the way not so huge an undertaking with only one legion to transport because it is faster in summer than marching across Macedonia. I think too that my brother doesn't want to get bogged down in a campaign west of the Hellespont, as Sulla did. He believes that Curio is well and truly capable of dealing with a Pontic invasion of Macedonia last year Curio and Cosconius in Illyricum worked as a team to such effect that they rolled up the Dardani and the Scordisci, and Curio is now making inroads on the Bessi. Lucullus ought to arrive in Pergamum around the end of September, though what will happen after that I do not know. Nor, I suspect, does my brother Lucullus. And that, Caesar, brings you up to date. Please write whatever news you hear I do not think Lucullus will have the time to keep me informed!
The letter made Caesar sigh; suddenly breathing exercises and rhetoric were not very stimulating. However, he had received no summons from Lucullus, and doubted he ever would. Especially if the tale of his pirate coup was all over Rome. Lucullus would have approved the deed but not the doer. He liked things bureaucratically tidy, officially neat. A privatus adventurer usurping the governor's authority would not sit well with Lucullus, for all he would understand why Caesar had acted. I wonder, thought Caesar the next day, if the wish is father to the actuality? Can a man influence events by the power of his unspoken desires? Or is it rather the workings of Fortune? I have luck, I am one of Fortune's favorites. And here it is yet again. The chance! And offered while there is no one to stop me. Well, no one except the likes of Juncus, who doesn't matter. Rhodus now insisted that King Mithridates had launched not one invasion, but three, each originating at Zela in Pontus, where he had his military headquarters and trained his vast armies. The main thrust he was definitely heading himself, three hundred thousand foot and horse rolling down the coast of Paphlagonia toward Bithynia, and supported by his general cousins Hermocrates and Taxiles as well as a fleet of one thousand ships, a good number of them pirate craft, under the command of his admiral cousin Aristonicus. But a second thrust commanded by the King's nephew Diophantus was proceeding into Cappadocia, its eventual target Cilicia; there were a hundred thousand troops involved. Then there was a third thrust, also one hundred thousand strong, under the command of a general cousin, Eumachus, and the bastard son of Gaius Marius sent to the King by Sertorius, Marcus Marius. This third force was under orders to penetrate Phrygia and try to enter Asia Province by the back door. A pity, sighed Caesar, that Lucullus and Marcus Cotta would not hear this news soon enough; the two legions which belonged to Cilicia were already on their way by sea to Pergamum at the command of Lucullus, which left Cilicia unprotected against an invasion by Diophantus. So there was nothing to do there except hope that events contrived to slow Diophantus down; he would meet little opposition in Cappadocia, thanks to King Tigranes. The two legions of Fimbriani were already in Pergamum with the craven governor, Juncus, and there was no likelihood that Juncus would send them south to deal with Eumachus and Marcus Marius; he would want them where they could ensure his own escape when Asia Province fell to Mithridates for the second time in less than fifteen years. And with no strong Roman to command them, the people of Asia Province would not resist. Could not resist. It was now the end of Sextilis, but Lucullus and Marcus Cotta were at sea for at least another month and that month, thought Caesar, would prove the vital one as far as Asia Province was concerned. "There is no one else," said Caesar to himself. The other side of Caesar answered: "But I will get no thanks if I am successful." "I don't do it for thanks, but for satisfaction." "Satisfaction? What do you mean by satisfaction?" "I mean I must prove to myself that I can do it." "They won't adore you the way they adore Pompeius Magnus." "Of course they won't! Pompeius Magnus is a Picentine of no moment, he could never be a danger to the Republic. He has not the blood. Sulla had the blood. And so do I." Then why put yourself at risk? You could end in being had up for treason and it's no use saying there is no treason! There doesn't have to be. Your actions will be open to interpretation, and who will be doing the interpreting?" . "Lucullus." "Exactly! He's already got you marked as a born troublemaker and he'll see this in the same light, even if he did award you a Civic Crown. Don't congratulate yourself because you were sensible enough to give most of the pirate spoils away you still kept a fortune that you didn't declare, and men like Lucullus will always suspect you of keeping that fortune." "Even so, I must do it." "Then try to do it like a Julius, not a Pompeius! No fuss, no fanfares, no shouting, no puffing yourself up afterward, even if you are completely successful." "A quiet duty for the sake of satisfaction." "Yes, a quiet duty for the sake of satisfaction."
He summoned Burgundus. "We're off to Priene at dawn tomorrow. Just you, me, and the two most discreet among the scribes. A horse and a mule each Toes and a shod horse for me, however, as well as a mule. You and I will need our armor and weapons." Long years of serving Caesar had insulated Burgundus against surprise, so he displayed none. "Demetrius?" he asked. "I won't be away long enough to need him. Besides, he's best left here. He's a gossip." Do I seek passage for us, or hire a ship?'' "Hire one. Small, light, and very fast." "Fast enough to outdistance pirates?" Caesar smiled. "Definitely, Burgundus. Once is enough." The journey occupied four days Cnidus, Myndus, Branchidae, Priene at the mouth of the Maeander River. Never had Caesar enjoyed a sea voyage more, whipping along in a sleek undecked boat powered by fifty oarsmen who rowed to the beat of a drum, their chests and shoulders massively developed by years of this same exercise; the boat carried a second crew equally good, and they spelled each other before real tiredness set in, eating and drinking hugely in between bouts of rowing. They reached Priene early enough on the fourth day for Caesar to seek out the ethnarch, a man of Aethiopian name, Memnon. "I presume you wouldn't be an ethnarch so soon after the reign of Mithridates in Asia Province if you had sympathized with his cause," said Caesar, brushing aside the customary courtesies. "Therefore I must ask you do you welcome the idea of another term under Mithridates?'' Memnon flinched. "No, Caesar!" "Good. In which case, Memnon, I require much of you, and in the shortest period of time." "I will try. What do you require?" "Call up the militia of Priene yourself and send to every town and community from Halicarnassus to Sardes to call up its militia. I want as many men as you can find as quickly as you can. Four legions, and all under their usual officers. The assembly point will be Magnesia by the Maeander eight days from now." Light broke; Memnon beamed. "The governor has acted!" "Oh, absolutely," said Caesar. "He's placed me in command of the Asian militia, though unfortunately he can spare no other Roman staff. That means, Memnon, that Asia Province will have to fight for itself instead of sitting back and letting Roman legions take all the glory." "Not before time!" said Memnon, a martial spark in his eye. "I feel the same way. Good local militia, Roman trained and Roman equipped, are much underestimated. But after this I can assure you they won't be." "Whom do we fight?" asked Memnon. "A Pontic general named Eumachus and a renegade Spaniard named Marcus Marius no relation to my uncle the great Gaius Marius," lied Caesar, who wanted his militia full of confidence, not awed by that name. So off went Memnon to organize the calling up of the Asian militia, without asking to see an official piece of paper or even pausing to wonder if Caesar was who and what he said he was. When Caesar was doing the pushing, nobody thought to question him. That night after he retired to his rooms in Memnon's house, Caesar conferred with Burgundus. "You won't be with me on this campaign, old friend," he said, "and there's no use protesting that Cardixa wouldn't speak to you again if you weren't on hand to protect me. I need you to do something far more important than standing on the sidelines of a battle wishing you were a Roman legionary or a militiaman. I need you to ride for Ancyra to see Deiotarus." "The Galatian thane," said Burgundus, nodding. "Yes, I remember him." "And he's bound to remember you. Even among the Gauls of Galatia, men don't come as big as you. I'm sure he knows more about the movements of Eumachus and Marcus Marius than I do, but it isn't to warn him that I'm sending you. I want you to tell him that I'm organizing an army of Asian militia and will try to lure the Pontic forces down the Maeander. Somewhere along the Maeander I hope to trap and defeat them. If I do, they'll retreat back into Phrygia before re forming their ranks and then trying to invade again. I want you to tell Deiotarus that he will never have a better opportunity to wipe this Pontic army out than if he catches it in Phrygia attempting to re form. In other words, tell him, he will be acting in concert with me. If I in Asia Province and he in Phrygia both do our jobs well, then there will be no invasion of Asia Province or Galatia this year." "How do I travel, Caesar? I mean, looking like what?" "I think you ought to look like a war god, Burgundus. Put on the gold armor Gaius Marius gave you, stuff the biggest purple feathers you can find in the marketplace into the crest of your helmet, and sing some frightful German song as loudly as you can. If you encounter Pontic soldiers, ride right through the middle of them as if they didn't exist. Between you and the Nesaean, you'll be the personification of martial terror." "And after I've seen Deiotarus?" "Return to me along the Maeander."
The hundred thousand Pontic men who had set out with Eumachus and Marcus Marius from Zela in the spring were under orders to concentrate upon infiltrating Asia Province as their first priority, but to travel in a more or less direct line between Zela in Pontus and any Phrygian backwater meant traversing Galatia, and Mithridates was not sure about Galatia. A new generation of chieftains had arisen to replace those he had murdered at a feast almost thirty years ago, and Pontic authority over Galatia was at best a tenuous thing. Eventually it would be necessary to deal with this odd outcrop of misplaced Gauls, but not first of all. His best men Mithridates had reserved for his own divisions, so the soldiers under the command of Eumachus and Marcus Marius were not properly seasoned. A campaign down the Maeander against disorganized communities of Asian Greeks would stiffen the troops, endow them with confidence. As a result of these cogitations, the King of Pontus kept Eumachus and Marcus Marius and their army with him as he marched into Paphlagonia. He was, he congratulated himself, superbly well equipped for this sally against Rome; in Pontic granaries there lay two million medimni of wheat, and one medimnus produced two one pound loaves of bread a day for thirty days. Therefore in wheat alone he had sufficient in storage to feed all his people and all his armies for several years. Therefore it mattered to him not at all that he carried an extra hundred thousand men with him into Paphlagonia. Petty details about how these enormous quantities of grain and other foodstuffs were to be transported he did not concern himself with; that lay in the domain of underlings, whom he simply assumed would wave their conjuring sticks and transport. In reality these hirelings had neither the training nor the practical imagination to do what came naturally to a Roman praefectus fabrum though no Roman general would have dreamed of moving an army over long distances if it numbered more than ten legions all told. Consequently by the time that Eumachus and Marcus Marius split their hundred thousand men away from the three hundred thousand belonging to Mithridates, supplies were running so short that the King was obliged to send snakelike trails of men back many miles to struggling oxcarts and make these men carry heavy loads of foods on their shoulders to feed the army. Which in turn meant a percentage of the soldiers were always exhausted from having to work as porters. The fleet was bringing supplies to Heracleia, the King was told; in Heracleia all would be set to rights, the King was told. However, Heracleia was scant comfort to Eumachus and Marcus Marius, who left the main forces to march inland down the Billaeus River, crossed a range of mountains and emerged in the valley of the Sangarius. In this fertile part of Bithynia they ate well at the expense of the local farmers, but soon were heading into heavily forested uplands where only small vales and pockets lay under cultivation. Thus what brought Eumachus and Marcus Marius to the parting of their ways was their inability to feed one hundred thousand Pontic soldiers. "You won't need the whole army to deal with a few Asian Greeks," said Marcus Marius to Eumachus, "and certainly you won't need cavalry. So I'm going to remain on the Tembris River with some of the foot and all the horse. We'll farm and we'll forage, and wait for news of you. Just make sure you're back by winter and that you're marching half the people of Asia Province with you as food porters! It isn't far from the upper Tembris to the lands of the Galatian Tolistobogii, so in the spring we'll fall on them and annihilate them. Which will give us plenty of Galatian food to eat next year." "I don't think the King my cousin would like to hear you belittle his glorious military venture by speaking of it in terms of food," said Eumachus, not fiercely or haughtily; he was too afraid of Mithridates ever to feel fierce or haughty. "The King your cousin is in bad need of some good Roman training, then he'd appreciate how hard it is to feed so many men on a march," said Marcus Marius, unimpressed. "I was sent to teach you lot the art of ambush and raid, but so far all I've done is general an army. I'm not a professional at it. But I do have common sense, and common sense says half of this force has to stay somewhere on a river where there's enough flat land to farm and yield sustenance. Hard luck if speaking of a campaign in terms of food upsets the King! If you want my opinion, he doesn't even live on the same earth the rest of us do." More time was wasted while Marcus Marius relocated himself, for Eumachus refused to leave until he was sure whereabouts he would find Marius on his return. Thus it was the beginning of September before he and some fifty thousand infantrymen crossed the Dindymus Mountains and picked up one of the tributaries of the Maeander. Naturally the further downstream the army moved the better foraging and food became, a stimulus to continue until the whole of this rich part of the world belonged once more to King Mithridates of Pontus. Because most of the biggest towns along the ever winding river lay on its south bank, Eumachus marched on its north bank, following a paved road which had started in the town of Tripolis. Promising the soldiers that they would be allowed to sack when Asia Province was secured, Eumachus bypassed Nysa, the first big city they encountered, and continued downstream in the direction of Tralles. It was impossible to keep the men entirely together on the march, since food had constantly to be found, and sometimes attractions like a flock of succulent young sheep or fat geese would send several hundred men whooping and chasing until every last animal was caught and slaughtered, by which time troop unrest had spread. In fact, the pleasant and placid progress through rich land had produced an element of festival. The scouts Eumachus sent out reported back twice a day, always with the same news: no sign of opposition. That, thought Eumachus scornfully, was because no focus of resistance existed south of Pergamum! All the Roman legions (even those of Cilicia) were garrisoned on the outskirts of Pergamum to protect the governor's precious person; this had been known to every Pontic general for some time, and Marcus Marius had confirmed it by sending scouts to the Caicus. So lulled and secure was Eumachus that he was not concerned when one evening his scouts failed to report back at their usual time, an hour before sunset. The city of Tralles was now somewhat closer than Nysa was behind, and the gently tilting undulations of the river valley which threw the Maeander into so many wandering, winding turns were flushed gold, long light upon harvest stubble. Eumachus gave the order to halt for the night. No fortifications were thrown up, no organized routine went into the making of a general camp; what happened resembled starlings settling, a process fraught with chatter, squabbles, relocations. There was just enough light to see by when out of the dim shadows four legions of Asian militia in properly Roman rank and file fell upon the supping Pontic army and slaughtered its unprepared soldiers piecemeal. Though they outnumbered the Asian militiamen by more than two to one, the Pontic troops were so taken unaware that they could put up no resistance. Provided with horses and by sheer chance located on the far side of the Pontic camp from Caesar's attack, Eumachus and his senior legates managed to get away, rode without caring about the fate of the army for the Tembris River and Marcus Marius. But luck was not with King Mithridates that year. Eumachus arrived back at the Tembris just in time to see Deiotarus and the Galatian Tolistobogii descend upon Marcus Marius's half of the invasion force. This was a cavalry battle in the main, but it never developed into a bitter contest; the largely Sarmatian and Scythian levies which had enlisted with Mithridates fought best on open steppe, could not maneuver in the steep sided valley of the upper Tembris, and fell in thousands. By December, the remnants of the Phrygian army had struggled back to Zela under the command of Eumachus; Marcus Marius himself had set out to find Mithridates, preferring to tell the King in person what had happened than detail it in a report.
* * *
The Asian militia was jubilant, and joined with the whole population of the Maeander valley in victory celebrations which lasted for many days. In his speech to the troops before the battle Caesar had harped upon the fact that Asia Province was defending itself, that Rome was far away and incapable of helping, that for once the fate of Asia Province depended wholly upon the Asian Greeks of that land. Speaking in the colloquial Greek of the region, he worked upon the feelings of patriotism and self help to such effect that the twenty thousand men of Lydia and Caria whom he led to ambush the camping Eumachus were so fired that the battle was almost an anticlimax. For four nundinae he had drilled and disciplined them, for four nundinae he had imbued them with a consciousness of their own worth, and the results were everything that he could possibly have hoped for. "No more Pontic armies will come this year," he said to Memnon at the victory feast in Tralles two days after the defeat of Eumachus, "but next year you may see more. I have taught you what to do and how to do it. Now it's up to the men of Asia Province to defend themselves. Rome, I predict, will be so caught up on other fronts that there won't be legions or generals available for duty anywhere in Asia Province. But you know now that you can look after yourselves." "That we do, Caesar, and we owe it to you," said Memnon. "Nonsense! All you really needed was someone to get you started, and it was my good fortune that I was to hand." Memnon leaned forward. "It is our intention to build a temple to Victory as close to the site of the battle as the flood plain permits there is talk of a small hill upon the outskirts of Tralles. Would you allow us to erect a statue of you within the temple so that the people never forget who led them?" Not if Lucullus had been present to veto the request would Caesar have declined this singular honor. Tralles was a long way from Rome and not one of Asia Province's biggest cities; few if any Romans of his own class would ever visit a temple to Victory which could claim no distinctions of age or (probably) great art. But to Caesar this honor meant a great deal. At the age of twenty six he would have a life sized statue of himself in full general's regalia inside a victory temple. For at twenty six he had led an army to victory. "I would be delighted," he said gravely. Then tomorrow I will send Glaucus to see you and take all the measurements. He's a fine sculptor who works out of the studios in Aphrodisias, but since he is in the militia he's here with us now. I'll make sure he brings his painter with him to make some colored sketches. Then you need not stay for further sittings if you have things to do elsewhere." Caesar did have things to do elsewhere. Chief among these was a journey to see Lucullus in Pergamum before news of the victory near Tralles reached him by other means. As Burgundus had come back from Galatia seven days before the battle, he was able to send the German giant to Rhodes escorting the two scribes and his precious Toes. The journey to Pergamum he would make alone. He rode the hundred and thirty miles without stopping for longer than it took to change horses, which he did often enough to get ten miles an hour out of those he rode during daylight, and seven miles an hour out of those he rode during the night. The road was a good Roman one, and though the moon was thin, the sky was cloudless; his luck. Having started out from Tralles at dawn the day after the victory feast had ended, he arrived in Pergamum three hours after dark on the same day. It was the middle of October. Lucullus received him at once. Caesar found it significant that he did so unaccompanied by Caesar's uncle Marcus Cotta, who was also in the governor's palace; in the consul's favor, however, of Juncus there was no sign either. Caesar found his outstretched hand ignored. Nor did Lucullus bid him sit down; the interview was conducted throughout with both men on their feet. "What brings you so far from your studies, Caesar? Have you encountered more pirates?" Lucullus asked, voice cold. "Not pirates," said Caesar in a businesslike manner, "but an army belonging to Mithridates. It came down the Maeander fifty thousand strong. I heard about its advent before you arrived in the east, but I thought it pointless to notify the governor, whose access to information was better than mine, but who had made no move to defend the Maeander valley. So I had Memnon of Priene call up the Asian militia which, as you know, he is authorized to do provided he has been so instructed by Rome. And he had no reason to assume I was not acting for Rome. By the middle of September the local city leaders of Lydia and Caria had assembled a force of twenty thousand men, which I put through drills and exercises in preparation for combat. The Pontic army entered the province in the latter part of September. Under my command, the Asian militia defeated Prince Eumachus near the city of Tralles three days ago. Almost all the Pontic soldiers were killed or captured, though Prince Eumachus himself got away. I understand that another Pontic army under the Spaniard Marcus Marius will be dealt with by the tetrarch Deiotarus of the Tolistobogii. You should receive word as to whether Deiotarus has succeeded within the next few days. That is all," Caesar ended. The long face with the chilly grey eyes did not thaw. "I think that is quite enough! Why didn't you notify the governor? You had no way of knowing what he planned." "The governor is an incompetent and venal fool. I have already experienced his quality. Had he been willing to take control which I doubt nothing would have been done quickly enough. I knew that. And that is why I didn't notify him. I didn't want him underfoot because I knew I could do what had to be done far better than he could." "You exceeded your authority, Caesar. In fact, you had no authority to exceed." "That's true. Therefore I exceeded nothing." "This is not a contest in sophistry!" "Better perhaps if it was. What do you want me to say? I am not very old, Lucullus, but I have already seen more than enough of these fellows Rome sends to her provinces endowed with imperium, and I do not believe that Rome is better served by blind obedience to the likes of Juncus, the Dolabellae or Verres than it is by men of my kind, imperium or not. I saw what had to be done and I did it. I might add, I did it knowing I would get no thanks. I did it knowing I would be reprimanded, perhaps even put on trial for a little treason." "Under Sulla's laws, there is no little treason." "Very well then, a big treason." "Why have you come to see me? To beg for mercy?" "I'd sooner be dead!" "You don't change." "Not for the worse, anyway." "I cannot condone what you've done." "I didn't expect you to." "Yet you came to see me. Why?" "To report to the magistrate in command, as is my duty." I presume you mean your duty as a member of the Senate of Rome," said Lucullus, "though that was surely owed to the governor as much as to me. However, I am not unjust, and I see that Rome has cause to be grateful for your swift action. In similar circumstances I might have acted in a similar way could I have assured myself I was not flouting the governor's imperium. To me, a man's imperium is far more important than his quality. I have been blamed by some for the fact that King Mithridates is at large to commence this third war against Rome because I refused to aid Fimbria in capturing Mithridates at Pitane, and it is commonly said thereby allowed Mithridates the room to escape. You would have collaborated with Fimbria on the premise that the end justifies the means. But I did not see my way clear to acknowledging the outlawed representative of an illegal Roman government. I stand by my refusal to help Fimbria. I stand by every Roman man endowed with imperium. And to conclude, I find you far too much like the other youth with big ideas, Gnaeus Pompeius who calls himself Magnus. But you, Caesar, are infinitely more dangerous than any Pompeius. You are born to the purple." "Odd," Caesar interrupted. "I said the same thing myself." Lucullus gave him a withering look. "I will not prosecute you, Caesar, but nor will I commend you. The battle fought at Tralles will be reported very briefly in my dispatches to Rome, and described as conducted by the Asian militia under local command. Your name will not be mentioned. Nor will I appoint you to my staff, nor will I permit any other governor to appoint you to his staff." Caesar had listened to this with wooden face and distant eyes, but when Lucullus indicated by an abrupt gesture that he was finished, Caesar's expression changed, became mulish. "I do not insist that I be mentioned in dispatches as the commander of the Asian militia, but I do absolutely insist that I be named in dispatches as present for the entire duration of the campaign on the Maeander. Unless I am listed, I will not be able to claim it as my fourth campaign. I am determined to serve in ten campaigns before I stand for election as quaestor." Lucullus stared. "You don't have to stand as quaestor! You are already in the Senate." "According to Sulla's law, I must be quaestor before I can be praetor or consul. And before I am quaestor, I intend to have ten campaigns listed." "Many men elected quaestor have never served in the obligatory ten campaigns. This isn't the time of Scipio Africanus and Cato the Censor! No one is going to bother to count up how many campaigns you've served in when your name goes up for the quaestorian elections." "In my case," said Caesar adamantly, "someone will make it his business to count up my campaigns. The pattern of my life is set. I will get nothing as a favor and much against bitter opposition. I stand above the rest and I will outdo the rest. But never, I swear, unconstitutionally. I will make my way up the cursus honorum exactly as the law prescribes. And if I am listed as having served in ten campaigns, in the first of which I won a Civic Crown, then I will come in at the top of the quaestor's poll. Which is the only place I would find acceptable after so many years a senator." Eyes flinty, Lucullus looked at the handsome face with its Sullan eyes and understood he could go so far, no further. "Ye gods, your arrogance knows no bounds! Very well, I will list you in dispatches as present for the duration of the campaign and also present at the battle." "Such is my right." "One day, Caesar, you will overextend yourself." "Impossible!" said Caesar, laughing. "It's remarks like that make you so detestable." "I fail to see why when I speak the truth." "One further thing." About to go, Caesar stayed. "Yes?" "This winter the proconsul Marcus Antonius is moving his theater of command against the pirates from the western end of Our Sea to its eastern end. I believe he means to concentrate upon Crete. His headquarters will be at Gytheum, where some of his legates are already working hard Marcus Antonius has to raise a vast fleet. You, of course, are our best gatherer of ships, as I know from your activities in Bithynia and Vatia Isauricus from your activities in Cyprus. Rhodes has obliged you twice! If you wish to add another campaign to your count, Caesar, then report to Gytheum at once. Your rank, I will inform Marcus Antonius, will be junior military tribune, and you will board with Roman citizens in the town. If I hear that you have set up your own establishment or exceeded your junior status in any way, I swear to you, Gaius Julius Caesar, that I will have you tried in Marcus Antonius's military court! And do not think I can't persuade him! After you a relative! prosecuted his brother, he doesn't love you at all. Of course you can refuse the commission. Such is your right as a Roman. But it's the only military commission you'll get anywhere after I write a few letters. I am the consul. That means my imperium overrules every other imperium, including the junior consul's so don't look for a commission there, Caesar!" "You forget," said Caesar gently, "that the aquatic imperium of Marcus Antonius is unlimited. On water, I believe he would outrank even the senior consul of the year." "Then I'll make sure I'm never upon the same piece of water as the one where Antonius is bobbing up and down," said Lucullus tiredly. "Go and see your uncle Cotta before you leave." "What, no bed for the night?" "The only bed I'd give you, Caesar, belonged to Procrustes." Said Caesar to his uncle Marcus Aurelius Cotta some moments later: "I knew dealing with Eumachus would land me in hot water, but I had no idea Lucullus would go as far as he has. Or perhaps I ought to say that I thought either I would be forgiven or tried for treason. Instead, Lucullus has concentrated upon personal retaliations aimed at hampering my career." "I have no genuine influence with him," said Marcus Cotta. "Lucullus is an autocrat. But then, so are you." "I can't stay, Uncle. I'm ordered to leave at once for oh, Rhodes I suppose, preparatory to relocating myself at Gytheum in a boardinghouse which has to be run by a Roman citizen! Truly, your senior colleague's conditions are extraordinary! I will have to send my freedmen home, including Burgundus I am not to be allowed to live in any kind of state." "Most peculiar! Provided his purse is fat enough, even a contubernalis can live like a king if he wants. And I imagine," said Marcus Cotta shrewdly, "that after your brush with the pirates, you can afford to live like a king." "No, I've been strapped. Clever, to pick on Antonius. I am not beloved of the Antonii." Caesar sighed. "Fancy his giving me junior rank! I ought at least to be a tribunus militum, even if of the unelected kind." "If you want to be loved, Caesar oh, rubbish! What am I doing, advising you? You know more answers than I know questions, and you know perfectly well how you want to conduct your life. If you're in hot water, it's because you stepped into the cauldron of your own free will and with both eyes wide open." "I admit it, Uncle. Now I must go if I'm to find a bed in the town before all the landlords bolt their doors. How is my uncle Gaius?" "Not prorogued for next year in Italian Gaul, despite the fact it needs a governor. He's had enough. And he expects to triumph." "I wish you luck in Bithynia, Uncle." "I suspect I'm going to need it," said Marcus Cotta.
It was the middle of November when Caesar arrived in the small Peloponnesian port city of Gytheum, to find that Lucullus had wasted no time; his advent was anticipated and the terms of his junior military tribunate spelled out explicitly. "What on earth have you done?" asked the legate Marcus Manius, who was in charge of setting up Antonius's headquarters. "Annoyed Lucullus," said Caesar briefly. "Care to be more specific?" "No." "Pity. I'm dying of curiosity." Manius strolled down the narrow, cobbled street alongside Caesar. "I thought first I'd show you where you'll be lodging. Not a bad place, actually. Two old Roman widowers named Apronius and Canuleius who share a huge old house. Apparently they were married to sisters women of Gytheum and moved in together after the second sister died. I thought of them immediately when the orders came through because they have lots of room to spare, and they'll spoil you. Funny old codgers, but very nice. Not that you'll be in Gytheum much. I don't envy you, chasing ships from the Greeks! But your papers say you're the best there is, so I daresay you'll manage." "I daresay I will," agreed Caesar, smiling. Collecting warships in the Peloponnese was not entirely unenjoyable, however, for one soaked in the Greek classics: did sandy describe Pylos, did titans build the walls of Argos? There was a certain quality of ageless dreaming about the Peloponnese that rendered the present irrelevant, as if the gods themselves were mere nurselings compared to the generations of men who had lived here. And while he was very good at incurring the enmity of the Roman great, when Caesar dealt with humbler men he found himself much liked. The fleets grew slowly through the winter, but at a rate Caesar thought Antonius would find hard to criticize. Instead of accepting promises, the best gatherer of ships in the world would commandeer any warlike vessels he saw on the spot, then tie the towns down to signed contracts guaranteeing delivery of newly built galleys to Gytheum in April. Marcus Antonius, Caesar thought, would not be ready to move before April, as he wasn't expected to sail from Massilia until March. In February the Great Man's personal entourage began to dribble in, and Caesar brows raised, mouth quivering got a far better idea of how Marcus Antonius campaigned. When Gytheum did not prove to own a suitable residence, the entourage insisted that one be built on the shore looking down the Laconian Gulf toward the beautiful island of Cythera; it had to be provided with pools, waterfalls, fountains, shower baths, central heating and imported multicolored marble interiors. "It can't possibly be finished until summer," said Caesar to Manius, eyes dancing, "so I was thinking of offering the Great Man room and board with Apronius and Canuleius." "He won't be happy when he finds his house unfinished," said Manius, who thought the situation as funny as Caesar did. "Mind you, the locals are adopting a praiseworthily Greek attitude toward sinking their precious town funds into that vast sybaritic eyesore they're planning on renting it for huge sums to all sorts of would be potentates after Antonius has moved on." "I shall make it my business to spread the fame of the vast sybaritic eyesore far and wide," said Caesar. "After all, this is one of the best climates in the world ideal for a long rest cure or a secret espousal of unmentionable vices." "I'd like to see them get their money back," said Man ius. "What a waste of everyone's resources! Though I didn't say that." "Eh?" shouted Caesar, hand cupped around his ear. When Marcus Antonius did arrive, it was to find Gytheum's commodious and very safe habor filling up with ships of all kinds (Caesar had not been too proud to accept merchantmen, knowing that Antonius had a legion of land troops to shunt about), and his villa only half finished. Nothing, however, could dent his uproariously jolly mood; he had been drinking unwatered wine to such effect that he had not been sober since leaving Massilia. As far as his fascinated legate Marcus Manius and his junior military tribune Gaius Julius Caesar could see, Antonius's idea of a campaign was to assault the private parts of as many women as he could find with what, so rumor had it, was a formidable weapon. A victory was a howl of feminine protest at the vigor of the bombardment and the size of the ram. "Ye gods, what an incompetent sot!" said Caesar to the walls of his pleasant and comfortable room in the house of Canuleius and Apronius; he dared not say it to any human listener. He had, of course, seen to it that Marcus Manius mentioned his fleet gathering activities in dispatches, so when his mother's letter arrived at the end of April not many days after Antonius, the news it contained presented a merciful release from duty in Gytheum without the loss of a campaign credit. Caesar's eldest uncle, Gaius Aurelius Cotta, returned from Italian Gaul early in the new year, dropped dead on the eve of his triumph. Leaving behind him among many other things a vacancy in the College of Pontifices, for he had been in length of years the oldest serving pontifex. And though Sulla had laid down that the college should consist of eight plebeians and seven patricians, at the time of Gaius Cotta's death it contained nine plebeians and only six patricians, due to Sulla's need to reward this man and that with pontificate or augurship. Normally the death of a plebeian priest meant that the college replaced him with another plebeian, but in order to arrange the membership as Sulla had laid down, the members of the college decided to co opt a patrician. And their choice had fallen upon Caesar. As far as Aurelia could gather, Caesar's selection hinged upon the fact that no Julian had been a member of the College of Pontifices or the College of Augurs since the murders of Lucius Caesar (an augur) and Caesar Strabo (a pontifex) thirteen years before. It had been generally accepted that Lucius Caesar's son would fill the next vacancy in the College of Augurs, but (said Aurelia) no one had dreamed of Caesar for the College of Pontifices. Her informant was Mamercus, who had told her that the decision had not been reached with complete accord; Catulus opposed him, as did Metellus the eldest son of the Billy goat. But after many auguries and a consultation of the prophetic books, Caesar won. The most important part of his mother's letter was a message from Mamercus, that if he wanted to make sure of his priesthood, Caesar had better get back to Rome for consecration and inauguration as soon as he possibly could; otherwise it was possible Catulus might sway the college to change its mind. His fifth campaign recorded, Caesar packed his few belongings with no regrets. The only people he would miss were his landlords, Apronius and Canuleius, and the legate Marcus Manius. "Though I must confess," he said to Manius, "that I wish I could have seen the vast sybaritic eyesore standing on the cove in all its ultimate glory." "To be pontifex is far more important," said Manius, who had not realized quite how important Caesar was; to Manius he had always seemed a down to earth and unassuming fellow who was very good at everything he did and a glutton for work. "What will you do after you've been inducted into the college?" "Try to find some humble propraetor with a war on his hands he can't handle," said Caesar. "Lucullus is proconsul now, which means he can't order the other governors about." "Spain?" "Too prominent in dispatches. No, I'll see if Marcus Fonteius needs a bright young military tribune in Gaul across the Alps. He's a vir militaris, and they're always sensible men. He won't care what Lucullus thinks of me as long as I can work." The fair face looked suddenly grim. "But first things first, and first is Marcus Junius Juncus. I shall prosecute him in the Extortion Court." "Haven't you heard?" asked Manius. "Heard what?" "Juncus is dead. He never got back to Rome. Shipwrecked."
3
He was a Thracian who was not a Thracian. In the year that Caesar left Gytheum to assume his pontificate, this Thracian who was not a Thracian turned twenty six, and entered upon the stage of history. His birth was respectable, though not illustrious, and his father, a Vesuvian Campanian, had been one of those who applied within sixty days to a praetor in Rome under the lex Plautia Papiria passed during the Italian War, and had been awarded the Roman citizenship because he had not been one of those Italians who had borne arms against Rome. Nothing in the boy's farming background could explain the boy's passion for war and everything military, but it was obvious to the father that when this second son turned seventeen he would enlist in the legions. However, the father was not without some influence, and was able to procure the boy a cadetship in the legion Marcus Crassus had recruited for Sulla after he landed in Italy and began his war against Carbo. The boy thrived under a martial regimen and distinguished himself in battle before he had his eighteenth birthday; he was transferred to one of Sulla's veteran legions, and in time was promoted to junior military tribune. Offered a discharge at the end of the last campaign in Etruria, he elected instead to join the army of Gaius Cosconius, sent to Illyricum to subdue the tribes collectively called Delmatae. At first he had found the locale and the style of warfare exhilarating, and added armillae and phalerae to his growing number of military decorations. But then Cosconius had become mired in a siege which lasted over two years; the port city of Salonae refused to yield or to fight. For the boy who was by now becoming a young man, the investment of Salonae was an intolerably boring and uneventful waste of his time. His course was set: he intended to espouse a career in the army as a vir militaris a Military Man. Gaius Marius had started out as a Military Man, and look where he ended! Yet here he was sitting for month after month outside an inert mass of brick and tile, doing nothing, going nowhere. He asked for a transfer to Spain because (like many of his companions) he was fascinated by the exploits of Sertorius, but the legate in command of his legion was not sympathetic, and refused him. Boredom piled upon boredom; he applied a second time for a transfer to Spain. And was refused a second time. After that blow his conduct deteriorated. He gained a name for insubordination, drinking, absence from camp without permission. All of which disappeared when Salonae fell and the general Cosconius began to collaborate with Gaius Scribonius Curio, governor of Macedonia, in a massive sweep aimed at subduing the Dardani. Now this was more like it! The incident which brought about the young man's downfall was classified as insurrection, and the unsympathetic legate turned out to be a secret enemy. The young man along with a number of others was arraigned in Cosconius's military court and tried for the crime of mutiny. The court found against him. Had he been an auxiliary or any kind of non Roman, his sentence would automatically have consisted of flogging and execution. But because he was a Roman and an officer with junior tribunician status and was the owner of many decorations for valor the young man was offered two alternatives. He would lose his citizenship, of course; but he could choose to be flogged and exiled permanently from Italy, or he could choose to become a gladiator. Understandably he chose to be a gladiator. That way, he could at least go home. Being a Campanian, he knew all about gladiators; the gladiatorial schools were concentrated around Capua. Shipped to Aquileia along with some seven other men convicted in the same mutiny who had also elected a gladiatorial fate, he was acquired by a dealer and sent to Capua for auction. However, it was no part of his intentions to advertise his erstwhile Roman citizen status. His father and older brother did not like the sport of gladiatorial combat and never went to funeral games; he could live in fairly close proximity to his father's farm without their ever knowing it. So he picked a ring name for himself, a good, short, martial sounding name with splendid fighting connotations: Spartacus. Yes, it rolled off the tongue well: Spartacus. And he vowed that Spartacus would become a famous gladiator, be asked for up and down the length of Italy, turn into a local Capuan hero with girls hanging off his arm and more invitations to dinner than he could handle. In the Capuan market he was sold to the lanista of a famous school owned by the consular and ex censor Lucius Marcius Philippus, for the look of him was wonderfully appealing: he was tall, had magnificently developed calves, thighs, chest, shoulders and arms, a neck like a bull, skin like a sun drenched girl's except for a few interesting looking scars; and he was handsome in a fair haired, grey eyed way; and he moved with a certain princely grace, bore himself regally. The lanista who paid one hundred thousand sesterces for him on behalf of Philippus (who naturally was not present Philippus had never set eyes on any of the five hundred gladiators he owned and rented out so profitably) thought from the look of him that Spartacus was a born gladiator. Philippus couldn't lose. There were only two styles of gladiator, the Thracian and the Gaul. Looking at Spartacus, the lanista was hard put to decide which kind he ought to be trained as; usually the man's physique dictated the answer, but Spartacus was so splendid he could be either. However, Gauls bore more scars and ran a slightly higher risk of permanent maiming, and the price had been a long one. Therefore the lanista elected to make Spartacus a Thracian. The more beautiful he remained in the ring, the higher his hiring price would be after he began to gain a reputation. His head was noble, would look better bare. A Thracian wore no helmet. Training began. A cautious man, the lanista made sure that Spartacus's athletic prowess was the equal of his looks before commissioning his armor, which was silver plated and embossed with gold. He wore a scarlet loincloth held at the waist by a broad black leather sword belt, and carried the curved saber of a Thracian cavalryman. His shins were protected by greaves which extended well up each thigh, which meant he moved more awkwardly and slowly than his opponent, the Gaul and needed more intelligence and coordination to manage these contraptions. Upon his right arm he wore a leather sleeve encrusted with metal scales, held in place by straps across neck and chest; it projected down over the back of his right hand to the knuckles. His outfit was completed by a small, round shield. It all came easily to Spartacus. Of course he was a bit of a mystery (his seven fellow convicts had gone elsewhere from Aquileia) as he would never speak of his military career, and what the Aquileian agent had said in his letter was sketchy in the extreme. But he spoke Campanian Latin as well as Campanian Greek, he was modestly literate, and he knew his way around an army. All of which began to disturb the lanista, who foresaw complications. Spartacus was too much the warrior, even in the practice ring with wooden sword and leather buckler. The first arm he broke in several places might have been a mistake, but when his tally of badly broken bones had put five doctores out of commission for some months, the lanista sent for Spartacus. "Look," the man said in a reasonable voice, "you must learn to think of soldiering in the ring as a game, not a war. What you're doing is a sport! The Etrusci invented it a thousand years ago, and it's been passed down the ages as an honorable and highly skilled profession. It doesn't exist anywhere in the world outside of Italy. Some man dies and his relatives put on not the games Achilles celebrated for Patroclus, running and jumping, boxing and wrestling but a solemn contest of athletic ability in the guise of warrior sport." The fair young giant stood listening with expressionless face, but the lanista noticed that the fingers of his right hand kept opening and closing, as if wishing for the feel of a sword. "Are you listening to me, Spartacus?" "Yes, lanista." "The doctor is your trainer, not your enemy. And let me tell you, a good doctor is hard to come by! Thanks to your misguided enthusiasm I'm five doctores poorer than I was a month ago, and I can't replace them with men anything like as good as they were. Oh, they'll all live! But two of them are permanently out of a job! Spartacus, you are not fighting the enemies of Rome, and shedding buckets of blood is not the object of the game! People come to see a sport a physical activity of thrust and parry, power and grace, skill and intelligence. The nicks and cuts and slashes all gladiators sustain bleed quite freely enough to thrill the audience, which doesn't come to see two men kill each other or cut off arms! It comes to see a sport. A sport, Spartacus! A contest of athletic prowess. If the audience wanted to see men kill and maim each other, it would go to a battlefield the gods know we've had more than our share of battlefields in Campania!" He stopped to eye Spartacus. "Now did that sink in? Do you understand better?" "Yes, lanista," said Spartacus. "Then go away and train some more, like a good boy! Take out your ardor on the bolsters and the swinging wooden men and next time you face a doctor with your toy sword, put your mind on making a beautiful movement through the air with it, not a nasty crunchy sound of bones breaking!" As Spartacus was quite intelligent enough to understand what the lanista had tried to explain to him, for some time after their chat he did turn his mind to the rituals and ceremonies of pure movement even found it a challenge he could enjoy. The wary and apprehensive doctores who faced him were gratified to see that he did not try to break their limbs, but instead concentrated upon the various traceries of movement which so thrilled a crowd. It took the lanista a longer time to believe that Spartacus was cured of his bloodthirstiness, but at the end of six months he put his problem gladiator on a list of five pairs who were to fight at the funeral games of one of the Guttae of Capua. Because it was a local performance the lanista could attend it himself, see for himself how Spartacus shaped up in the ring. The Gaul who faced Spartacus (they were the third pair on) was a good match for him; a little taller, equally splendid of body. Naked except for a small patch of cloth covering his genitalia, the Gaul fought with a very long, slightly curved shield and a straight, two edged sword. The chief glory of his apparel was his helmet, a splendid silver cap with cheek flaps and a neck guard, and surmounted by a leaping enameled fish larger than a conventional plume would have been. Spartacus had never seen the Gaul before, let alone spoken to him; in a huge establishment like Philippus's school the only men one got to know were one's doctores, the lanista, and fellow pupils at the same stage of development. But he had been told beforehand that this first opponent was an experienced fighter of some fourteen bouts who had gained much popularity in Capua, the arena he usually occupied. It went well for a few moments as Spartacus in his clumsier gear moved in slow circles just out of the Gaul's reach. Looking upon his handsome face and Herculean body, some of the women in the crowd sighed audibly, made kissing sounds; Spartacus was forming the nucleus of a future band of devoted female followers. But as the lanista did not allow a new man access to women until he had earned this bonus in the ring, the kissing sounds affected Spartacus, took his mind off the Gaul just a little. He raised his small round shield a foot too high, and the Gaul, moving like an eel, chopped a neat gash in his left buttock. That was the end of it. And the end of the Gaul. So fast that no one in the crowd saw more than a blur, Spartacus whirled on his left heel and brought his curved saber down against the side of his opponent's neck. The blade went in far enough to sever the spinal column; the Gaul's head fell over sideways, flopped against his shoulder and hung there with horrified eyes still blinking their lids and mouth aping the kissing sounds thrown to Spartacus. There were screams, shouts, tremendous ripples and eddies in the crowd as some fainted and some fled and some vomited. Spartacus was marched back to the barracks. "That does it!" said the lanista. "You'll never, never make a gladiator!" "But he wounded me!" protested Spartacus. The lanista shook his head. How can someone so clever be so stupid?" he asked. "Stupid, stupid, stupid! With your looks and your natural ability, you could have been the most famous gladiator in all of Italy earned yourself an easy competence, me a pat on the back, and Lucius Marcius Philippus a huge fortune! But you haven't got it in you, Spartacus, because you're so stupid! So clever and so stupid! You're out of here today." Out of here? Where to?'' the Thracian demanded, still angry. "I have to serve my time as a gladiator!" "Oh, you will," said the lanista. "But not here. Lucius Marcius Philippus owns another school further out of Capua, and that's where I'm sending you. It's a cozy little establishment about a hundred gladiators, ten or so doctores, and the best known lanista in the business. Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Batiatus. Old Batiatus the barbarian. He's from Illyricum. After me, Spartacus, you'll find Batiatus a cup of pure poison." "I'll survive," said Spartacus, unimpressed. "I have to." At dawn the next day a closed box cart came for the deportee, who entered it quickly, then discovered when the bolt on the door slammed home that the only other communication between interior and exterior was narrow gaps between the ill fitting planks. He was a prisoner who couldn't even see where he was going! A prisoner! So alien and horrific was the concept to a Roman that by the time the cart turned in through the enormously high and formidably barred gates of the gladiatorial school run by Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Batiatus, the prisoner was bruised, grazed and half senseless from beating himself against the planks.
That had been a year ago. His twenty fifth birthday had passed at the other school, and his twenty sixth inside the walls of what its inmates referred to as the Villa Batiatus. No pampering at the Villa Batiatus! The exact number of men held there varied slightly from time to time, but the record books usually said one hundred gladiators fifty Thracians and fifty Gauls. To Batiatus they were not individuals, just Thracians and Gauls. All of them had come from other schools after some kind of offense mostly associated with violence or rebellion and they lived like mine slaves except that when inside the Villa Batiatus they were not chained, and they were well fed, comfortably bedded, even provided with women. But it was genuine slavery. Each man knew he was inside the Villa Batiatus until he died, even if he survived the ring; once too old to fight, a man was put to work as a doctor or a servant. They were not paid, nor were their bouts spaced far enough apart to allow wounds to heal when business for Batiatus was brisk and business for Batiatus was almost always brisk. For he was the bottom price man; anyone who had a few sesterces to rub together and a wish to honor a dead relative with funeral games could hire a couple of Batiatus's men. Because of the low price, most of the engagements were fairly local. Escape from the Villa Batiatus was virtually impossible. Its interior was divided into many small areas each walled and barred off from every other area, and no part wherein gladiators moved was actually adjacent to the immensely high outside walls, all of which were topped by inward angled iron spikes. Escape on the outside (they were often outside on engagements) was also virtually impossible; each man was chained at wrists and ankles, wore an iron collar around his neck, traveled in a windowless prison cart, and when on foot was escorted everywhere by a party of archers carrying small composite bows, arrows at the ready. Only in the moment a man entered the ring was he freed from his chains, and then the archers were stationed nearby. How different from the kind of life an ordinary soldier of the sawdust lived! He was free to come and go from his barracks, was coddled and made much of, the idol of a good many women, and aware he was banking a sizable nest egg. He fought no more than five or six bouts in a year, and after five years or thirty bouts whichever came first he retired. Even free men sometimes elected to become gladiators, though the bulk were deserters or mutineers from the legions, and a very few were sent to the schools already enslaved. All this care and cosseting arose out of the fact that a trained gladiator was a very expensive investment, had to be preserved and kept happy to earn the owner of his school a nice fat profit. At the school of Batiatus things were different. He didn't care whether a man bit the sawdust during his first bout or fought regularly for ten years. Men much over twenty were not accepted as gladiators, and ring life lasted ten years at the most; it was a young man's sport. Even Batiatus didn't send grizzled men into the ring; the crowd (and the bereaved doing the hiring) liked its combatants supple, unset. Once retired from the ring, a man in the Villa Batiatus simply went on existing and enduring there. A desperate fate considering that when an ordinary gladiator retired, he was free to do what he liked where he liked; usually he went to Rome or some other big city, and hired himself out as a bouncer, a bodyguard, or a bully boy.
* * *
The Villa Batiatus was a place of unyielding routines which were heralded by the clanging of an iron bar on an iron circle and rotated according to a schedule painted too high on the main exercise yard wall to be defaced. The hundred or however many men were locked at sunset into barred stone cells holding between seven and eight, each having no communication with its neighbors even sound did not penetrate the walls. No man remained with the same group; sleeping arrangements were staggered so that each man moved each evening to six or seven new companions. After ten days he was shuffled yet again, and so crafty were the permutations Batiatus had worked out that a new man had to wait for a year before he succeeded in getting to know every other man. The cells were clean and equipped with big comfortable beds as well as an anteroom which contained a bath, running water and plenty of chamber pots. Warm in winter and cool in summer, the cells were used only between sunset and sunrise. They were serviced during the day by domestic slaves with whom the men had no contact. At sunrise the men were roused by the sound of bolts sliding back, and commenced the day's routines. For all that day a gladiator would associate with the men he had shared a cell with on the previous night, though talk was forbidden. Each group broke its fast in the walled off yard directly in front of its cell; if it was raining, a hide shelter was rigged overhead. Then the group would work together in the practice drills, after which a doctor would divide them, Gaul against Thracian if that were possible, and put them to dueling with wooden swords and leather shields. This was followed by the main meal of the day cooked meats, plenty of fresh bread, good olive oil, fruit and vegetables in season, eggs, salt fish, some sort of pulse porridge sopped up with bread, and all the water a man could drink. Wine, even sparse enough to be a mere flavoring, was never served. After the meal they rested in silence for two hours before being set to polishing armor, working leather, repairing boots, or some other gladiatorial maintenance; any tools were scrupulously logged and collected afterward, and archers watched. A third and lighter meal followed a hard exercise workout, then it was time for each man to move to his new set of companions. Batiatus kept forty women slaves whose only duty aside from soft work in the kitchens was to assuage the sexual appetites of the gladiators, who were visited by these women every third night. Again, a man took his turn with all forty; in numbered order, the seven or eight women deputed to a cell would file into the cell under escort and each go straight to an assigned bed nor could she remain in that bed once intercourse had taken place. Most of the men were capable of at least three or four sexual encounters during the night, but each time had to be with a different woman. Well aware that in this activity lay the greatest danger of some form of affection growing up, Batiatus set a watch on the lucky cells (a duty no servant minded, as the cells were lit for the night) and made sure the women moved on and the men did not try to strike up conversations. Not all hundred gladiators were in residence at once. From one third to one half of them were on the road an existence all of them loathed, as conditions were not as comfortable as inside the Villa Batiatus, and of women there were none. But the absence of a group allowed the women days of rest (strictly rostered Batiatus had a passion for rosters and tricky permutations) and also gave those who were heavily pregnant time to have their babies before returning to duty. Duty was excused them only during the last month before labor and the first month after it, which meant that the women strove not to fall pregnant, and that many who did immediately procured abortions. Every baby born was removed from its mother at once; if a female it was thrown away on the Villa Batiatus rubbish heap, and if a male was taken to Batiatus himself for inspection. He always had a few women clients anxious to purchase a male baby. The leader of the women was a genuine Thracian by name of Aluso. She was a priestess of the Bessi, she was warlike, she had been one of Batiatus's whores for nine years, and she hated Batiatus more fiercely than any gladiator in the school. The female child she had borne during her first year at the Villa Batiatus would under her tribal culture have been her successor as priestess, but Batiatus had ignored her frenzied pleas to be allowed to keep the baby, who had been thrown out with the rubbish. After that Aluso had taken the medicine and no other babies followed. But she nursed her outrage, and swore by terrible gods that Batiatus would die a piece at a time. All of this meant that Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Batiatus was one of the most efficient and meticulous men the city of gladiators had ever known. Nothing escaped him no precaution was overlooked no detail left unattended to. And in that side of him lay a part of the reason why this school for unsatisfactory gladiators was so successful. The other part of the reason lay in Batiatus's personal skill as a lanista. He trusted no one, he deputed nothing better done himself. So he kept the only key to the stone fortress wherein the armor and weapons were stored; he took all the bookings; he made all the travel arrangements; he picked every archer, slave, armorer, cook, laundress, whore, doctor and assistant personally; he kept the accounts; and he alone ever saw the school's owner, Lucius Marcius Philippus who never visited his establishment, but rather made Batiatus come to Rome. Batiatus was also the only one of Philippus's old employees who had survived the colossal shaking up Pompey had instituted some years before; in fact, so impressed was Pompey by Batiatus that he asked him to take over as Philippus's general manager. But Batiatus had smiled and declined; he loved his work.
Yet the end of the Villa Batiatus was in sight when Spartacus and seven other gladiators returned from an engagement in Larinum at the end of the month Sextilis in the year Caesar left Gytheum and the service of Marcus Antonius to assume his pontificate. Larinum had been a fascinating experience, even for eight men kept cooped up in a prison cart and chained for every moment save those spent fighting in the ring. At the end of the previous year one of Larinum's most prominent men, Statius Albius Oppianicus, had been prosecuted by his stepson, Aulus Cluentius Habitus, for attempting to murder him. The trial had taken place in Rome, and a horrific story of mass murder going back over twenty years had tumbled out. Oppianicus, the whole of Rome had learned, was responsible for the murders of his wives, sons, brothers, in laws, cousins, and others, each killing committed or commissioned in order to accumulate money and power. A friend of the fabulously rich aristocrat Marcus Licinius Crassus, Oppianicus had nearly been acquitted; the tribune of the plebs Lucius Quinctius became involved, and a huge sum of money had been set aside to bribe the jury of senators. That Oppianicus had ended in being convicted was due to the avarice of his appointed briber, the same Gaius Aelius Staienus who had proven so useful to Pompey a few years earlier and kept ninety thousand sesterces for himself when Gaius Antonius Hybrida had hired him to bribe nine tribunes of the plebs. For Staienus was incapable of honorably fulfilling the most dishonorable commissions; he kept the money Oppianicus gave him to bribe the jury and let Oppianicus be condemned. Larinum could still find little to talk about except the perfidy of Oppianicus, even when gladiators were in town to stage funeral games there had been too many funeral games in Larinum, was the trouble. So while they ate chained up to a table in the courtyard of a local inn, the gladiators had listened to the four archers marveling, and looked interested. Though they were not allowed to speak to each other, of course they did. Time and much practice had enabled them to carry on snatches of shortened conversation, and mass murder among the upper classes of Larinum was wonderful cover. Despite the huge obstacles the obsessive meticulousness of Batiatus had thrown up everywhere, Spartacus now the veteran of more than twelve months as a resident of the Villa Batiatus was gathering together the threads of a plot aimed at a mass escape and a mass murder. He finally knew everybody and had learned how to communicate with people he couldn't see daily or even monthly. If Batiatus had created a complicated web which kept his whores and his gladiators from getting to know each other well, Spartacus had constructed an equally complicated web which enabled whores and gladiators to pass on ideas and information and pass back comments, favorable or critical. In fact, the Batiatus system had allowed Spartacus to make positive use of this enforced indirect contact; it meant personalities were not thrown together often enough to clash or to contemplate supplanting Spartacus as the leader of the coming insurrection. He had started to send out feelers at the beginning of the summer, and now at the end of it his plans were in place. Every gladiator without exception had agreed that if Spartacus could engineer a breakout, he would be a part of it, and the whores a vital part of Spartacus's scheme had also agreed. There were two Roman deserters whose understanding of military discipline and methods were almost the equal of Spartacus's, and through the whisper network he had appointed them his deputies in the escape. They fought as Gauls and had adopted the ring names of Crixus and Oenomaus because the audiences disliked Latin names which reminded them that most of their sawdust heroes were Roman military outlaws. As chance would have it, both Crixus and Oenomaus were with Spartacus in Larinum, a boon for Spartacus, who had been able to move the date of his projected breakout forward in time. They would go eight days after the return from Larinum, no matter how many or how few gladiators were actually at the Villa Batiatus. As this was the day after the nundinae the number was likely to be higher than lower, enhanced by the fact that Batiatus curtailed his show bookings during September, when he was accustomed to take his annual vacation and pay his annual visit to Philippus. The Thracian priestess Aluso had become Spartacus's most fervid ally; after the plot had been agreed to by everyone, whichever men were in the same cell as Spartacus contrived with the aid of the other women to ensure that Spartacus and Aluso were able to spend the whole night together if Aluso was one of the women's detail. In voices more breath than noise they had gone over the innumerable factors involved, and Aluso vowed that through the agency of her women, she would keep all the men in a fever of enthusiasm. She had been stealing kitchen implements for Spartacus since early summer, so cunningly that when they were finally missed one of the cooks was blamed; no one suspected a gladiators' revolt. A cleaver a small carving knife a hank of stout twine a glass jar since smashed to slivers a meat hook. A modest haul, but enough for eight men. All of these were held in the women's quarters, which the women cleaned themselves. But on the night before the breakout the women delegated to visit Spartacus's cell carried the implements concealed within their scanty clothing; Aluso was not among them. Morning dawned. The eight men left their cell to eat in their enclosure. Clad only in loincloths, they carried nothing, but tucked inside the V of scarlet cloth each man wore was a section of twine about three feet long. The archer, an assistant doctor and two ex gladiators who now served as yardsmen were garroted so quickly that the iron door of the cell still gaped open; Spartacus and his seven companions grabbed the weapons from their beds and were scattering along the row of cells using a key found on the archer before anyone knew what was happening. Each group of gladiators had dallied and grumbled on rising, shuffled and delayed, so that none had finished moving from cell to yard before eight silent athletes were among them. A cleaver flashed, a knife was plunged into a chest, a wicked chunk of broken glass sliced through a throat, and the eight pieces of twine were passed on. It was done without a word, a shout, a warning; Spartacus and the other gladiators now held the row of cells and the yards leading from them. Some of the dead men carried keys, more gates leading further into the labyrinth were unlocked, and the seventy men who were imprisoned in the Villa Batiatus at the time streamed silently onward, outward. There was a shed in which axes and tools were kept; a muffled jangle, and anything useful was in a gladiator's hand. Another flaw in Batiatus's ground plan now lay revealed, for the high internal walls kept what was going on limited to the immediate vicinity. Batiatus ought to have erected watch towers and put his archers in them. The alarm was given when the men reached the kitchens, but that was far too late. Possessed now of every sharp instrument the kitchens owned, the gladiators used pot lids to ward off arrows and went after everyone left alive. Including Batiatus, who had meant to leave on his vacation the previous day but instead had stayed because he had found a discrepancy in his books. The men kept him alive until they had liberated the women, who tore him apart a little at a time under the clinical supervision of Aluso; she ate his heart with relish. And by the time the sun had risen Spartacus and his sixty nine companions had taken the Villa Batiatus. The weapons were removed from storage and every cart was yoked up to oxen or to mules. The food from the kitchens and all the spare armaments were piled into the wagons, the main gates were thrown open, and the little expedition marched bravely out into the world. Knowing Campania of old, Spartacus's planning had not been confined to the taking of the Villa Batiatus. It stood beside the route from Capua to Nola some seven miles out of the city; Spartacus turned away from Capua and headed in the direction of Nola. Not far along the road they encountered another wagon train and attacked it, for no other reason than that they wanted no one alive to report which way they had gone. To the delight of all, the wagons turned out to be loaded with weapons and armor for another gladiatorial school. There were now more items useful for a war than people to wear or wield them. Soon the cavalcade left the main road to take a deserted track which headed west of south toward Mount Vesuvius. Clad in an archer's scaly jacket and carrying a Thracian's saber, Aluso moved to join Spartacus at the front of the column. She had washed off Batiatus's blood, but still licked her chops with the purring content of a cat every time she thought of how she had eaten his heart. "You look like Minerva," said Spartacus, smiling; he had found nothing to criticize in Aluso's treatment of Batiatus. "I feel like myself for the first time in ten years." And she jiggled the big leather bag dangling from her waist; it held the head of Batiatus, which she intended to scarify and transform its skull into her drinking cup, as was the custom of her tribe. "You'll be my woman only, if that pleases you." "It pleases me if I can be a part of your war councils." They spoke in Greek since Aluso knew no Latin, and spoke with the ease of those who had enjoyed each other's bodies without any emotional clouding of simple passion, united in the pleasure of being free, of walking unchained and unsupervised.
Vesuvius was impressively different from other peaks. It stood alone amid the rolling plenty of Campania not far from the shores of Crater Bay, sloping upward in easy planes for three thousand feet neatly patched with vineyards, orchards, vegetable and wheat fields; the soil was deep and rich. For several thousand more feet above the tilled slopes there reared a rocky, dissected tower dotted with trees hardy enough to dig their knobby toes into crevices, but devoid of habitation or cultivation. Spartacus knew every inch of the mountain. His father's farm lay on its western flank, and he and his older brother had played for years amid the crags of the upper peak. So he led his train with purpose ever upward until he reached a bowl shaped hollow high among the rocks on the northern side. The edges of the hollow were steep and it was difficult getting the carts inside it, but in its bottom grew lush grass, and there was room for a much larger collection of people and animals than Spartacus owned. Yellow smears of sulphur stained the escarpment and the smells which a mound in the middle exhaled were noisome; yet that meant the grasses had never been grazed and shepherds never brought their flocks here. The place was thought to be haunted, a fact Spartacus did not impart to his followers. For several hours he concentrated upon getting his camp organized, shelters built out of the planks dismembered from prison wagons, women set to preparing food, men deputed to this task and that. But when the sun had sunk lower than the western rim of the round hollow, he called everyone together. "Crixus and Oenomaus, stand one to each side of me," he said, "and Aluso, as chieftain of the women, as our priestess and as my woman, sit at my feet. The rest of you will face us." He waited until the group had sorted itself out, then raised himself higher than Crixus and Oenomaus by jumping upon a rock. "We are free for the moment, but we must never forget that under the law we are slaves. We have murdered our keepers and our owner, and when the authorities find out we will be hunted down. Never before have we been able to gather as a people and discuss our purposes, our fate, our future." He drew a deep breath. First of all, I will keep no man or no woman against his or her will. Those of a mind to seek their own ways separate from mine are at liberty to go at any time. I ask for no vows, no oaths, no ceremonies swearing fidelity to me. We have been prisoners, we have felt chains, we have been given no privileges accorded to free men, and the women have been forced into harlotry. So I will do nothing to bind you. "This here" he waved his hand about to indicate the camp "is a temporary shelter. Sooner or later we will have to leave it. We were seen climbing the mountain, and the news of our deed will soon follow us." A gladiator squatting on his haunches in the front row Spartacus didn't know his name raised a hand to speak. "I see that we will be pursued and hunted down," said the fellow, frowning. "Would it not be better to disband now? If we scattered in a hundred directions, some of us at least will manage to escape. If we stay together, we will be captured together." Spartacus nodded. There is truth in what you say. However, I'm not in favor of it. Why? Chiefly because we have no money, no clothes other than what Batiatus issued us and they brand us for what we are and nothing to help us except weapons, which would be dangerous if we were scattered. Batiatus had no money on the premises, not one single sestertius. But money is a vital necessity, and I think we have to stay together until we find it." "How can we do that?" asked the same fellow. The smile Spartacus gave him was rueful but charming. "I have no idea!" he said frankly. "If this were Rome we could rob someone. But this is Campania, and full of careful farmers who keep everything in a bank or buried where we'd never find it." He spread his hands in an appeal. "Let me tell you what I would like us to do, then everyone can think about it. Tomorrow at this same time we'll meet and vote." No more enlightened than the rest, Crixus and Oenomaus nodded vigorously. "Tell us, Spartacus," said Crixus. The light was dying little by little, but Spartacus atop his rock seemed to concentrate the last rays of the sun upon himself, and looked like a man worth following. Determined, sure, strong, reliable. "You all know the name Quintus Sertorius," he said. "A Roman in revolt against the system which produces men like Batiatus. He has gathered Spain to himself, and soon he will be marching to Rome to be the Dictator and found a new style of Republic. We know that because we heard people talking whenever we were sent somewhere to fight. We learned too that many in Italy want Quintus Sertorius at the head of Rome. Especially the Samnites." He paused, wet his lips. "I know what I am going to do! I am going to Spain to join Quintus Sertorius. But if it is at all possible I would bring him another army an army which would already have struck blows against the Rome of Sulla and his heirs. I am going to recruit among the Samnites, the Lucanians, and all the others in Italy who would rather see a new Rome than watch their heritage run away to nothing. I will recruit among the slaves of Campania too, and offer them full citizenship rights in the Rome of Quintus Sertorius. We have more weapons than we can use unless we recruit more men. And when Rome sends troops against us we will defeat them and take their gear too!" He shrugged. "I have nothing to lose but my life, and I have vowed that never again will I endure the kind of existence Batiatus forced upon me. A man even a man enslaved! must have the right to associate freely with his fellows, to move in the world. Prison is worse than death. I will never go back to any prison!" He broke down, wept, dashed the tears away impatiently. "I am a man, and I will make my mark! But all of you should be saying that too! If we stay together and form the nucleus of an army, then we stand a chance to defend ourselves and make a great mark. If we scatter in a hundred directions, every last one of us will have to run, run, run. Why run like deer if we can march like men? Why not carve ourselves a place in the Rome of Quintus Sertorius by softening up Italy for him, then marching to join him as he comes? Rome has few troops in Italy, we know that. Which of us hasn't heard the Capuans complaining that their livelihood is dwindling because the legionary camps are empty? Who is there to stop us? I was a military tribune once. Crixus, Oenomaus, and many of you here belonged to Rome's legions. Is there anything that the likes of Lucullus or Pompeius Magnus knows about forming and running an army that I do not, or Crixus, or Oenomaus, or any of you? It isn't a difficult business to run an army! So why don't we become an army? We can win victories! There are no veteran legions in Italy to stop us, just cohorts of raw recruits. It is we who will attract experienced soldiers, the Samnites and Lucanians who fought to be free of Rome. And between us we will train the inexperienced who join us does it follow that a slave is necessarily a man without martial ability or valor? Servile armies have brought Rome to the brink of ruin several times, and only fell because they were not led by men who understand how Rome fights. They were not led by Romans!" Both mighty arms went up above his head; Spartacus closed his hands into fists and shook them. "I will lead our army! And I will lead it to victory! I will bring it to Quintus Sertorius wreathed in laurels and with Rome in Italy beneath its foot!" Down came the arms. "Think about what I have said, I ask nothing more." The little band of gladiators and women said nothing when Spartacus jumped down, but the looks directed at him were glowing and Aluso was smiling at him fiercely. "They will vote for you tomorrow," she said. "Yes, I think they will." Then come with me now to the spring of water. It needs to be purified if it is to give life to many." Quite how she understood what she was doing Spartacus did not know, but was awed to discover that after she had muttered her incantations and dug with the severed hand of Batiatus at the crumbling walls to one side of the hot, smelly fountain which gushed out of a cleft, a second spate of water appeared cool, sweet, quenching. "It is an omen," said Spartacus.
In twenty days a thousand volunteers had accumulated inside the hollow near the top of Vesuvius, though it remained a mystery to Spartacus how word had flown around when he had as yet sent no messengers or recruiting teams into the surrounding countryside. Perhaps a tenth of those who arrived to join the gladiators were escaped slaves, but by far the majority were free men of Samnite nationality. Nola wasn't far away, and Nola hated Rome. So did Pompeii, Neapolis, and all the other partisans of Italy who had fought to the death against Sulla, first in the Italian War, then for Pontius Telesinus. Rome might delude herself that she had crushed Samnium; but that, thought Spartacus as he entered Samnite name after Samnite name on his recruitment list, would never happen until the last Samnite was no more. Many of them arrived wearing armor and carrying weapons, hoary veterans who spat at the mention of Sulla's name or made the sign to ward off the Evil Eye at the mention of Cethegus and Verres, the two who had scorched the Samnite heartlands. "I have something to show you," said Crixus to Spartacus, voice eager; it was the morning of the last day of September. Drilling a century of slaves, Spartacus handed the task to another gladiator and moved off with Crixus, who was dragging anxiously at his arm. "What is it?" he asked. "Better to see for yourself," said Crixus as he led Spartacus to a gap in the crater wall which allowed a far and sweeping view of Vesuvius's northern slopes. Two Samnites were on sentry duty, and turned excited faces toward their leader. "Look!" said one. Spartacus looked. Below him for a thousand feet the crags and pockets of the upper mountain presented an inhospitable mien; below that lay ordered fields. And through the wheat stubble there wound a column of Roman soldiers led by four mounted men in the Attic helmets and contoured cuirasses of high officers, the man riding alone behind three riding abreast wearing the looped and ritually knotted scarlet sash of high imperium around his glittering chest. "Well, well! They've sent a praetor against us at the very least!" said Spartacus with a chuckle. "How many legions?" asked Crixus, looking worried. Spartacus stared, astonished. "Legions? You were in them, Crixus, you ought to be able to tell!" "That's just it! I was in them. When you're in them, you never get to see what you look like." Spartacus grinned, ruffled Crixus's hair. "Rest easy, there's no more than half a legion's worth down there five cohorts of the greenest troops I've ever seen. Notice how they straggle, can't keep a straight line or an even distance apart? What's more important, they're being led by someone just as green! See how he rides behind his legates? Sure sign! A confident general is always out in front." "Five cohorts? That's at least two and a half thousand men." "Five cohorts that have never been in a legion, Crixus." "I'll sound general quarters." "No, stay here with me. Let them think we haven't noticed them. If they hear bugles and shouting, they'll stop and camp down there on the slopes. Whereas if they think they've stolen a march on us, that idiot leading them will keep on coming until he's among the rocks and realizes he can't make a camp. By then it will be too late to re form and march down again the whole lot will have to doss down in little groups wherever they can find the room. Idiots! If they'd gone round to the south, they could have used the track right up to our hollow." By the time darkness fell Spartacus had established beyond doubt that the punitive expedition was indeed composed of raw recruits, and that the general was a praetor named Gaius Claudius Glaber; the Senate had ordered him to pick up five cohorts in Capua as he passed through and keep on marching until he found the rebels and flushed them out of their Vesuvian hole. By dawn the punitive expedition no longer existed. Throughout the night Spartacus had sent silent raiding parties down into the crags, some even lowered on ropes, to kill swiftly and noiselessly. So green indeed were these recruits that they had shed their armor and piled their arms together before cuddling up to campfires which betrayed where every pocket of them slept, and so green was Gaius Claudius Glaber that he thought the lie of the land a greater protection than a proper camp. Closer to dawn than to dusk some of the more wakeful soldiers began to understand what was going on, and gave the alarm. The stampede began. Spartacus struck then in force, using his women followers as torchbearers to light his way. Half Glaber's troops died, the other half fled but left their arms and armor behind them. Chief among the fugitives were Glaber and his three legates. Two thousand eight hundred sets of infantry equipment went to swell the cache in the hollow; Spartacus stripped his growing army of its gladiatorial accoutrements in favor of legionary gear and added Glaber's baggage train to his carts and animals. Volunteers were now streaming in, most of them trained soldiers; when his tally grew to five thousand, Spartacus decided the hollow on Vesuvius had outlived its usefulness and moved his legion out. He knew exactly where he was going.
* * *
Thus it was that when the praetors Publius Varinius and Lucius Cossinius marched two legions of recruits out of camp in Capua and headed off along the Nola road, they encountered a well laid out Roman fortification not far from the devastated Villa Batiatus. Varinius, the senior in command, was experienced. So was Cossinius, his second in command. One look at the men of their two legions had horrified them; so raw were these recruits that their basic training had only just begun! To add to the praetors' difficulties the weather was cold, wet, and windy, and some kind of virulent respiratory infection was raging through the ranks. When Varinius saw the workmanlike structure beside the Nola road he knew at once that it belonged to the rebels but also knew that his own men were not capable of attacking it. Instead he put the two legions into a camp alongside the rebels. No one knew a name then, nor any details about the rebels save that they had extirpated the gladiatorial school of Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Batiatus (who appeared on its books as the proprietor), gone to earth on Mount Vesuvius, and had been joined by some thousands of discontented Samnites, Lucanians, and slaves. From the disgraced Glaber had come the news that the rebels now owned every scrap of his gear, and that they were well enough led to have gone about destroying Glaber's five cohorts like experts. However, some thorough scouting revealed to Varinius and Cossinius that the force inside the rebel camp numbered only about five thousand, and that a certain proportion were women. Heartened, Varinius deployed his two legions for battle the next morning, secure in the knowledge that even with sick raw troops he had the numbers to win. It was still raining hard. When the battle was over Varinius didn't know whether to blame his defeat upon the sheer terror the sight of the rebels had inspired in his men, or upon the illness which caused so many of his legionaries to lay down their arms and refuse to fight, pleading that they couldn't, they just couldn't. Worst blow of all was that Cossinius had been killed trying to rally a group of would be deserters and that a great deal of equipment had been spirited off the field by the rebels. There was no point in pursuing the rebels, who had marched off through the rain in the direction of their camp. Varinius wheeled his bedraggled and demoralized column about and went back to Capua, where he wrote to the Senate frankly, not sparing himself but not sparing the Senate either. There were no experienced troops in Italy, he said, except for the rebels. He did have a name to illuminate his report: Spartacus, a Thracian gladiator. For six market intervals Varinius concentrated upon the training of his miserable soldiers, most of whom had survived the battle, but seemed less likely to survive the respiratory disease which still raged through their ranks. He commandeered the services of some old Sullan veteran centurions to help him train, though he couldn't persuade them to enlist. The Senate thought it prudent to begin recruiting four more legions, and assured Varinius that he had its support in whatever measures he felt called upon to execute. A fourth praetor out of that year's group of eight was dispatched from Rome to act as Varinius's senior legate: Publius Valerius. One fled, one dead, one vanquished; the fourth was not a happy man. Varinius thought his men sufficiently well trained to begin operations at the end of November, and led them out of Capua to attack Spartacus's camp. Only to find it deserted. Spartacus had stolen away, yet one more indication that, Thracian or no, he was a military man in the Roman manner. Illness still dogged poor Varinius. As he led his two under strength legions south he had to watch helplessly as whole cohorts were forced to abandon the march, their centurions promising to catch up with him as soon as the men felt better. Near Picentia, just before the ford across the Silarus River, he caught up with the rebels at last; only to see in horror that Spartacus's legion had mushroomed into an army. Five thousand less than two months ago twenty five thousand now! Not daring to attack, Varinius was obliged to watch this suddenly great force cross the Silarus and march off along the Via Popillia into Lucania. When the sick cohorts caught up and the stricken men still with him showed signs of recovering, Varinius and Valerius held a conference. Did they follow the rebels into Lucania or return to Capua to spend the winter training a bigger army? "What you really mean," said Valerius, "is whether we would do better to give battle now, even though outnumbered badly, or whether we can raise enough extra men during the winter to make delaying a confrontation until the spring a wiser move." "I don't think there is a decision to make," said Varinius. "We have to follow them now. By the spring they're likely to be doubled in strength and every man they add to their ranks will be a Lucanian veteran." So Varinius and Valerius followed, even when the evidence told them that Spartacus had departed from the Via Popillia and was moving steadily into the wilds of the Lucanian mountains. For eight days they followed without seeing more than old signs, pitching a stout camp each and every night. Taxing work, but the prudent alternative. On the ninth evening the same process was begun amid the grumbles of men who had not been legionaries long enough to understand the necessity or the advantages of a safe camp. And while the earth walls were being piled up out of the refuse thrown from the ditches, Spartacus attacked. Outnumbered and outgeneraled, Varinius had no choice other than to retreat, though he left his beautifully caparisoned Public Horse behind along with most of his soldiers. Of the eighteen cohorts he had started with from Capua, only five returned out of Lucania; having crossed the Silarus into Campania again, Varinius and Valerius left these five cohorts to guard the ford under the command of a quaestor, Gaius Toranius. The two praetors journeyed back to Rome, there to exhort the Senate to train more men as quickly as possible. The situation was undeniably growing more serious every day, but between Lucullus and Marcus Cotta in the east and Pompey in Spain, many of the senators felt that the recruiting process was a waste of time. The Italian well was dry. Then in January came the news that Spartacus had issued out of Lucania with forty thousand men organized into eight efficient legions. The rebels had rolled over poor Gaius Toranius at the Silarus, killed him and every man in his five cohorts. Campania lay at the mercy of Spartacus, who, said the report, was busy trying to persuade towns of Samnite population to come over to his side, declare for a free Italy. The tribunes of the Treasury were told very succinctly to cease their noises of complaint and start finding the money to lure veterans out of retirement. The praetor Quintus Arrius (who had been scheduled to replace Gaius Verres as governor of Sicily) was instructed to hustle himself to Capua and begin organizing a proper consular army of four legions, stiffened as much as possible with veteran intakes. The new consuls, Lucius Gellius Poplicola and Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus, were formally given the command in the war against Spartacus.
All of this Spartacus gradually discovered from the time he had re entered Campania. As his army was still growing, he had learned to weld it on the march, forming and drilling new cohorts as he went. It had been a grief when Oenomaus was killed during the successful attack on the camp of Varinius and Valerius, but Crixus was still very much alive and other capable legates were rising to the surface. The Public Horse which had belonged to Varinius made a wonderful mount for a supreme commander! Showy. Every morning Spartacus kissed its nose and stroked its flowing silvery mane before leaping upon its back; he called it Batiatus. Certain that towns like Nola and Nuceria would rally behind him, he had sent his ambassadors to see their magistrates at once, explaining that he was intent upon helping Quintus Sertorius establish a new Italian Republic, and asking for donations of men, materiel, money. Only to be told firmly that no city of Campania or any other region in Italy would support the cause of Quintus Sertorius or of Spartacus the gladiator general. "We do not love the Romans," said the magistrates of Nola, "and we are proud of the fact that we held out longer against Rome than any other place in all of Italy. But no more. Never again. Our prosperity is gone, all our young men are dead. We will not join you against Rome." When Nuceria returned the same answer Spartacus held a small conference with Crixus and Aluso. "Sack them," said the Thracian priestess. "Teach them that it is wiser to join us." "I agree," said Crixus, "though my reason is different. We have forty thousand men, enough equipment to outfit every last one, and plenty to eat. But we have nothing else, Spartacus. It is all very well to promise our troops lives of distinction and wealth under the government of Quintus Sertorius, but it might be better to give them some of that wealth right now. If we sack any town which refuses to join us, we will terrify the towns we have still to reach and we will please our legions. Women, plunder there's not a soldier born who doesn't love a sack!" His temper frayed by what he saw as unappreciative rejection, Spartacus made up his mind more quickly than the old Spartacus of pregladiatorial days would have; that had been a different life, he a different sort of man. "Very well. We attack Nuceria and Nola. Tell the men to have no mercy." The men had no mercy. Looking at the results, Spartacus decided that there was much merit in sacking towns. Nuceria and Nola had yielded treasure as well as money, food, women; if he continued to sack, he would be able to present Quintus Sertorius with a huge fortune as well as an army! And if he did, then it seemed likely that Quintus Sertorius the Dictator of Rome would make Spartacus the Thracian gladiator his Master of the Horse. Therefore the huge fortune had to be obtained before he left Italy. Requests were still pouring in from whole districts of men anxious to join him, and telling of rich pickings in parts of Lucania, Bruttium and Calabria which had not been touched by the Italian War. So from Campania the rebels journeyed south to sack Consentia in Bruttium and then Thurii and Metapontum on the Gulf of Tarentum. Much to Spartacus's delight, all three towns were possessed of staggering wealth. When Aluso had finished scarifying the skull of Batiatus, he had given her a sheet of silver with which to line it; but after Consentia, Thurii and Metapontum, he told her to throw the silver on the nearest rubbish heap, replace it with gold. And there was a certain seduction in all this as well as the ever present seduction of Aluso, who thought like a barbarian but had terrible magic and stood to him as the talisman of his luck. As long as he had Aluso by his side, he was one of Fortune's favorites. Yes, she was wonderful. She could find water, she sensed when disaster was looming, she always gave him the right advice. Growing heavy with his child, her rich red mouth a perfect foil for flaxen hair and wild white wolfs pallid eyes, ankles and wrists clashing with the gold she loaded upon them, he thought her perfect, not the least because she was a Thracian and he had become a Thracian. They belonged together; she was the personification of this strange new life. Early in April he was marching into eastern Samnium, sure that here at least the towns would join him. But Asernia, Bovianum, Beneventum and Saepinum all rejected his overtures we won't join you, we don't want you, go away! Nor were they worth sacking. Verres and Cethegus had left nothing. However, individual Samnites kept flocking to join his army, which had now swelled to ninety thousand men. So many people, Spartacus was finding out, were difficult to manage. Though the troops were organized into proper Roman legions and were armed in Roman style, he could never seem to find enough capable legates and tribunes to keep an iron control over soldierly impulses, wine, the hideous strife the female camp followers provoked. Time, he decided, to march for Italian Gaul, Gaul across the Alps, and Quintus Sertorius in Nearer Spain. Not to the west of the Apennines he had no desire to venture anywhere near the city of Rome. He would proceed up the Adriatic littoral through regions which had fought bitterly against Roman control of the peninsula Marrucini, Vestini, Frentani, southern Picentines. Many of their men would join him! But Crixus didn't want to go to Nearer Spain. Nor did the thirty thousand men in his division of the army. "Why go so far?" he asked. "If what you say about Quintus Sertorius is true, then one day he will arrive in Italy. It's better that he finds us in Italy still, with our foot on Rome's neck. The distance from here to Spain is half as far again as a thousand miles, and we'd be marching the whole way through barbarian tribes who would see us as just another lot of Romans. My men and I are against the idea of leaving Italy." "If you and your men are against the idea of leaving Italy," said Spartacus angrily, "then don't leave Italy! What do I care? I've close to a hundred thousand men to look after, and that's far too many! So off you go, Crixus the further, the better! Take your thirty thousand idiots, stay in Italy!" So when Spartacus and seventy thousand soldiers together with a vast baggage train and forty thousand women, not to mention babies and young children turned north to cross the Tifernus River, Crixus and his thirty thousand followers turned south in the direction of Brundisium. It was the end of April.
At about the same moment, the consuls Gellius and Clodianus left Rome to pick up their troops from Capua, Quintus Arrius the ex praetor having told the Senate that the four legions of new soldiers assembled in Capua were as good as they were ever going to be; he could not guarantee that they were battleworthy, but he hoped they were. When the consuls reached Capua they were informed of the split between Spartacus and Crixus, and of the new direction into the north that Spartacus himself was taking. A plan was developed; Quintus Arrius would take one legion south to deal with Crixus at once, Gellius would take the second legion and shadow Spartacus from behind until Arrius could rejoin him, while Clodianus took the other two legions on a rapid march past Rome, then east on the Via Valeria to emerge on the Adriatic coast well to the north of Spartacus. The two consuls would then have Spartacus between them and could close the jaws of their pincer. Some days later came splendid news from Quintus Arrius. Though outnumbered five to one, he had concealed himself in ambush on Mount Garganus in Apulia and fallen upon the undisciplined, jostling mass of men Crixus led into the trap. Crixus himself and all thirty thousand of his followers were killed, those who survived the ambush by execution afterward; Quintus Arrius had no intention of leaving live enemy in his wake. Gellius was not so lucky. What Arrius had done to Crixus, Spartacus did to him. The troops of the single legion Gellius possessed scattered in wild panic the moment they saw a vast force descending upon them a good thing, as it turned out, for those who stayed were slaughtered. And at least they fled without abandoning arms or armor, so that when the reunited Arrius and Gellius managed to round them up they still had their equipment and could (theoretically, anyway) fight again without needing to return to Capua. The course Arrius and Gellius took after their defeat was of no moment to Spartacus; he marched immediately into the north to deal with Clodianus, of whose ploy he had been informed by a captured Roman tribune. At Hadria on the Adriatic coast the two armies met with much the same result for Clodianus as for Gellius. The troops of Clodianus dispersed in panic. Victor on both fields, Spartacus continued his northward progress unopposed. Nothing daunted, Gellius, Clodianus and Arrius collected their men and tried again at Firmum Picenum. Again they were defeated. Spartacus marched into the Ager Gallicus. He crossed the Rubico into Italian Gaul at the end of Sextilis and started up the Via Aemilia toward Placentia and the western Alps. Quintus Sertorius, here we come! The valley of the Padus was lush, rich countryside which provided forage aplenty and towns with granaries full to overflowing. As he now systematically sacked towns likely to yield good plunder, Spartacus did not endear himself or his army to the citizens of Italian Gaul. At Mutina, halfway to the Alps, the vast army encountered the governor of Italian Gaul, Gaius Cassius Longinus, who tried valiantly to block their progress with a single legion. Gallant though the action was, it could not but fail; Cassius's legate Gnaeus Manlius came up two days later with Italian Gaul's other legion and suffered the same fate as Cassius. On both occasions the Roman troops had stayed to fight, which meant that Spartacus collected over ten thousand sets of arms and armor on the field. The last Roman to whom Spartacus had personally spoken and if he spoke to none, then nor did anyone else in that vast and terrifying horde had been the tribune captured during the first defeat of Gellius months before. Neither at Hadria nor at Firmum Picenum did he so much as see Gellius, Clodianus or Arrius at close quarters. But now at Mutina he had two high ranking Roman prisoners, Gaius Cassius and Gnaeus Manlius, and he fancied the idea of speaking with them: time to let a couple of members of the Senate see the man of whom all Italy and Italian Gaul was talking! Time to let the Senate know who he was. For he had no intention of killing or detaining Cassius and Manlius; he wanted them to return to Rome and report in person. He had, however, loaded his prisoners down with chains, and made sure that when they were brought into his presence he was seated on a podium and wearing a plain white toga. Cassius and Manlius stared, but it was when Spartacus addressed them in good, Campanian accented Latin that they realized what he was. "You're an Italian!" said Cassius. "I'm a Roman," Spartacus corrected him. No Cassius was easily cowed; the clan was warlike and very fierce, and if an occasional Cassius committed a military blunder, no Cassius had ever run away. So this Cassius proved himself a true member of his family by lifting one manacled arm and shaking his fist at the big, handsome fellow on the podium. "Free me from the indignity of these bonds and you'll soon be a dead Roman!" he snarled. "A deserter from the legions, eh? Put in the ring as a Thracian!" Spartacus flushed. "I'm no deserter," he said stiffly. "In me you see a military tribune who was unjustly convicted of mutiny in Illyricum. And you find your bonds an indignity? Well, how do you think I found my bonds when I was sent to the kind of school run by a worm like Batiatus? One set of chains deserves another, Cassius the proconsul!" "Kill us and get it over and done with," said Cassius. "Kill you? Oh, no, I have no intention of doing that," said Spartacus, smiling. "I'm going to set you free now that you've felt the indignity of bonds. You will go back to Rome and you will tell the Senate who I am, and where I'm going, and what I intend to do when I get there and what I will be when I come back." Manlius moved as if to answer; Cassius turned his head and glared; Manlius subsided. "Who you are a mutineer. Where you're going to perdition. What you're going to do when you get there rot. What you'll be when you come back a mindless shade without substance or shadow," sneered Cassius. "I'd be glad to tell the Senate all of that!" "Then tell the Senate this while you're about it!" snapped Spartacus, rising to his feet and ripping off the immaculate toga; he raked his feet on it with the relish of a dog raking its hind legs after defaecation, then kicked it off the podium. In my train I have eighty thousand men, all properly armed and trained to fight like Romans. Most of them are Samnites and Lucanians, but even the slaves who enlisted under me are brave men. I have thousands of talents in plunder. And I am on my way to join Quintus Sertorius in Nearer Spain. Together he and I will inflict total defeat upon Rome's armies and generals in both the Spains, and then Quintus Sertorius and I will march back to Italy. Your Rome doesn't stand a chance, proconsul! Before the next year has passed, Quintus Sertorius will be the Dictator of Rome, and I will be his Master of the Horse!" Cassius and Manlius had listened to this with a series of expressions chasing each other across their faces fury, awe, anger, bewilderment, amazement and finally, when they were sure Spartacus had ended, amusement! Both men threw their heads back and roared with unfeigned laughter while Spartacus stood feeling a slowly rising tide of red suffuse his cheeks. What had he said that they found so funny? Did they laugh at his temerity? Did they think him mad? "Oh, you fool!" said Cassius when he was able, the tears of hilarity running like a freshet. "You great bumpkin! You booby! Don't you have an intelligence network? Of course you don't! You're not a Roman commander's anus! What's the difference between this horde of yours and a horde of barbarians? Nothing, and that is the simple truth! I can't believe you don't know, but you really don't know!" "Know what?" asked Spartacus, his color gone. There had been no room for rage at the derision in Cassius's voice, at the epithets he hurled; all that filled Spartacus's mind was fear. "Sertorius is dead! Assassinated by his own senior legate Perperna last winter. There is no rebel army in Spain! Just the victorious legions of Metellus Pius and Pompeius Magnus, who will soon be marching back to Italy to put paid to you and your whole horde of barbarians!" And Cassius laughed again. Spartacus didn't stay to hear, he fled from the room with his hands clapped against his ears and sought out Aluso. Now the mother of Spartacus's son, Aluso could find nothing to say to console him; he covered his head in folds of his scarlet general's cape snatched from the couch, and wept, wept, wept. What can I do?'' he asked her, rocking back and forth. "I have an army with no objective, a people with no home!" Hair hanging in strings over her face, knees wide apart as she squatted with her blood cup and her knucklebones and the grisly tattered hand of Batiatus, Aluso whipped the bones with the hand, stared and muttered. "Rome's great enemy in the west is dead," she said at last, "but Rome's great enemy in the east still lives. The bones say we must march to join Mithridates." Oh, why hadn't he thought of that for himself? Spartacus threw away the general's cape, looked at Aluso with wide, tear blurred eyes. "Mithridates! Of course Mithridates! We will march across the eastern Alps into Illyricum, cross Thrace to the Euxine and join ourselves to Pontus." He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, snuffled, gazed at Aluso wildly. "In Thrace is your homeland, woman. Would you rather stay there?'' She snorted scornfully. My place is with you, Spartacus. Whether they know it or not, the Bessi are a defeated people. No tribe in the world is strong enough to resist Rome forever, only a great king like Mithridates. No, husband, we will not stay in Thrace. We will join ourselves to King Mithridates."
One of the many problems about an army as huge as that one belonging to Spartacus was the sheer impossibility of direct communication with all its members. He gathered the vast crowd together as best he could and did his utmost to make sure that all his men and their women understood why they were going to turn in their tracks and march back down the Via Aemilia toward Bononia, where they would take the Via Annia northeast to Aquileia and Illyricum. Some did understand, but many did not, either because they hadn't heard Spartacus himself and so had received a garbled version of what he said, or because they owned all an Italian's fear and detestation of the eastern potentate. Quintus Sertorius was Roman. Mithridates was a savage who ate Italian babies and would enslave everyone.