4
To become a pontifex was to enter the most exclusive enclave of political power in Rome; the augurship came a close second and there were some families whose augurships were as jealously guarded and prized as any family guarded and prized its pontificate, but always the pontificate came out that little bit ahead. So when Gaius Julius Caesar was inducted into the College of Pontifices he knew that he had moved more surely toward his ultimate goal, the consulship, and that this inauguration more than made up for his failure as the flamen Dialis. No one would ever be able to point the finger at him and imply that his status was in doubt, that perhaps he ought to be the flamen Dialis in fact; his position as a co opted pontifex told everybody he was firmly ensconced at the very core of the Republic. His mother, he learned, had befriended Mamercus and his wife Cornelia Sulla, and moved these days more freely among the high nobles her exile to an insula in the Subura had driven away; she was so enormously respected, so admired. The odium of her marriage to Gaius Marius had removed his Aunt Julia from the position she might otherwise have come to occupy with increasing age that of the modern Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi. And it now seemed as if his mother might inherit the title! These days she dined with women like Catulus's wife, Hortensia, and Hortensius's wife, Lutatia, with young matrons like Servilia the widow of a Brutus and the wife of Decimus Junius Silanus (by whom she now had two little girls to add to Brutus's son) and with several Licinias, Marcias, Cornelia Scipiones and Junias. "It's wonderful, Mater, but why?" he asked, eyes twinkling. Her beautiful eyes gleamed, the creases at the corners of her mouth compressed until little dimples popped up in her cheeks. "Why do you expect answers to rhetorical questions?" she asked. "You know as well as I do, Caesar. Your career is accelerating, and I am helping." She gave a slight cough. "Besides, most of these women seem to me to be utterly lacking in common sense. So they tend to come to me with their problems." She thought about that statement, amended it: "All, that is, except Servilia. Now she is a very structured woman! Knows exactly where she's going. You ought to meet her, Caesar." He looked indescribably bored. "Thank you, Mater, but no. I am extremely grateful for every little bit of help you can give me, but that does not mean I'll join the sweet watered wine and little cakes circle. The only women aside from you and Cinnilla who interest me are the wives of men I intend to cuckold. As I have no quarrel with Decimus Junius Silanus, I fail to see why I should cultivate his wife. The patrician Servilii are insufferable!" "This one isn't insufferable," said Aurelia, but not in the tone of voice which suggested she had an end to pursue. Instead she changed the subject. "I haven't seen any evidence that you intend to settle back into city life." "That's because I don't. I have just enough time to join Marcus Fonteius in Gaul across the Alps for a quick campaign, so that's where I'm off to. I'll be back by next June I'm going to stand for election as one of the tribunes of the soldiers." "Sensible," she approved. "I'm told that you're a superlative soldier, so you'll do well in an official capacity." He winced. "Unkind and unfair, Mater!"
Fonteius, who like most of the Transalpine governors had based himself in Massilia, was perfectly willing to keep Caesar busy for ten months. He had sustained a bad leg wound fighting the Vocontii, and chafed at the thought of watching all his work go for nothing because he could not ride. So when Caesar arrived Fonteius handed him the province's two legions and told him to finish the campaign up the Druentia River; Fonteius would occupy himself dealing with the supply lines to Spain. After the news of the death of Sertorius came, the governor breathed a sigh of relief and embarked in tandem with Caesar upon a sweeping campaign up the Rhodanus valley into the lands of the Allobroges. Born soldiers both, Fonteius and Caesar got on famously together, and admitted freely to each other at the end of the second campaign that there was no joy quite like working with a man of eminent military sense. So when Caesar returned to Rome in his habitual headlong fashion, he rode in the knowledge that his record now stood at seven campaigns only three to go! He had loved his time in Gaul, never having ventured west of the Alps before, and found it considerably easier dealing with the Gauls themselves because (thanks to his old tutor, Marcus Antonius Gnipho, to Cardixa and to some of his mother's tenants) he spoke several Gallic dialects fluently. Deeming no Roman conversant with their tongues, the Salluvian and Vocontian scouts tended to slip into Gallic whenever they wished to exchange information not for Roman ears; but Caesar understood very quickly, learned much he wasn't supposed to and never gave himself away. It was a good time to be standing for election as a tribune of the soldiers. The presence of Spartacus meant that his duty in the consuls' legions would be within Italy. But first he had to get himself elected don the specially chalked, snow white toga of the candidate and move among the electors in every marketplace and basilica in Rome, not to mention arcades and colonnades, guilds and colleges, the porticus and the portico. Since there were twenty four tribunes of the soldiers elected annually by the Assembly of the People, it was not a particularly difficult feat to be voted in, but Caesar had set himself a much harder task than mere election: he was resolved to be the candidate who polled the highest number of votes in every election he would contest as he climbed the cursus honorum. Thus he put himself through much that the average candidate for that lowest of all magistracies deemed superfluous effort. Nor would he avail himself of the services of a privately employed nomenclator, that arch recollector of people's names; Caesar would be his own nomenclator, never forget a face or the name associated with it. A man flattered by instant placing of his name with his face after some years had elapsed since the last meeting was very prone to think highly of such a brilliant, courteous, capable fellow and vote for him. Curiously most candidates forgot the Subura, just looked blank and dismissed it as a low life infestation Rome would be better without; but Caesar, who had lived in the Subura all his life, knew that it abounded with men of the lowest end of the First Class and the upper end of the Second Class. Not one of whom was unknown to him. Not one of whom would refuse to vote for him. He was returned at the head of the poll, and like the twenty quaestors elected at the same convocation of the Assembly of the People, he would commence his duties on the fifth day of December rather than on New Year's Day. The lots which would give him his legion placement (with five others, he would be assigned to one of the consuls' four legions) would not be drawn until he took office, nor could he make a nuisance of himself by visiting a consular legion ahead of his time; even Capua was off limits. Distressing, considering the disastrous military events of that particular year! By the end of Quinctilis it was glaringly obvious even to the most obtuse senator that the consuls Gellius and Clodianus were incapable of halting Spartacus. With Philippus leading the chorus (difficult for him, since Gellius and Clodianus belonged to Pompey as much as he did himself), the Senate tactfully told the consuls that they were being removed from command in the war against Spartacus; they were needed in Rome to govern, and it was now clear that the war should go to a man endowed with a full proconsular imperium a man who had personal access to retired veterans and the clout to inspire them to return to the eagles. A man with a good war record, and preferably of Sullan convictions. A man who not only belonged to the Senate, but had been at the least a praetor. Of course everyone inside the Senate and outside it knew that there was only one candidate for the job, only one candidate sitting idle in Rome without province abroad or war of some kind already on his hands, only one candidate with the necessary veteran resources and war record: Marcus Licinius Crassus. Urban praetor the year before, he had declined to take a governorship, pleading as his excuse the fact that Rome needed him more at home than in some foreign place. In anyone else such lethargy and lack of true political zeal would have been instantly condemned; but Marcus Crassus was allowed his foibles. Had to be allowed them! Most of the Senate was in debt to him for some trifling loan or another. Not that he agitated for the job. That was not his style. Instead he sat back in his suite of offices behind the Macellum Cuppedenis and waited. A suite of offices sounded most imposing until the curious man visited Crassus's establishment. No expensive pictures hung on its walls, no comfortable couches were positioned around, no spacious halls permitted clients to cluster and chat, no servants hovered to offer Falernian wine or rare cheeses. Such was known to happen: Titus Pomponius Atticus, for instance that ex partner of Crassus's who now so loathed him conducted his multifarious businesses in exquisite premises. Crassus, however, did not even begin to understand the need a harried businessman's animus might have to surround itself with beautiful comfortable things. To Crassus wasted space was wasted money, money spent on pretty offices was wasted money. When he was in his suite of rooms he occupied a desk in one corner of a crowded hall, shoved about or sidled around by all the toiling accountants, scribes and secretaries who shared the same area; it may have been just a trifle inconvenient, but it meant his staff was permanently under his eye and his eye missed nothing. No, he didn't agitate for the job, and he had no need to buy himself a senatorial lobby. Let Pompeius Magnus waste his money on that sort of exercise! Not necessary when one was willing to lend a needy senator whatever amount of cash he wanted and interest free. Pompeius would never see his money back. Whereas Crassus could call in his loans at any time and not be out of purse. In September the Senate finally acted. Marcus Licinius Crassus was asked if he would assume a full proconsular imperium, take unto himself eight legions, and command in the war against the Thracian gladiator Spartacus. It took him several days to reply, which he finally did in the House with all his customary brevity and deliberateness. To Caesar, watching appreciatively from his seat on the opposite side of the Curia Hostilia, it was a lesson in the power of presence and the powerful stench of money. Crassus was quite tall but never looked it, so wide was he. Not that he was fat. Rather, he was built like an ox, with thick wrists and big hands, a mighty neck and shoulders. In a toga he was sheer bulk until one saw the muscles in the exposed right forearm, felt the solid oak of it in a handshake. His face was big and broad, expressionless but not unpleasantly so, and the light grey eyes had a habit of resting upon their objective with a mild kindness. Hair and brows were pale brown, not quite mouse colored, and his skin went dark in the sun quickly. He spoke now in his normal voice, which was surprisingly high (Apollonius of Molon would have said that was because his neck was short, reflected Caesar), and said, Conscript Fathers, I am sensible of the honor you accord me in offering me this high command. I would like to accept, but... " He paused, gaze ambling affably from one face to another. I am a humble man, and I am very aware that whatever influence I have is due to a thousand men of the knightly order who cannot make their presence directly felt inside this House. I could not accept this high command without being sure that they consented to it. Therefore I humbly ask this House to present a senatus consultum to the Assembly of the People. If that body votes me my command, I will be happy to accept." Clever Crassus! applauded Caesar. If the Senate gave, the Senate could take away. As it had in the case of Gellius and Clodianus. But if the Assembly of the People was asked to ratify a decree handed down from the Senate and did ratify it then only the Assembly of the People could unmake it. Not impossible, by any means. But between the tribunes of the plebs drawn claw and fang by Sulla and the general apathy of the House in making decisions, a law passed in the Assembly of the People would put Crassus in a very strong position. Clever, clever Crassus! No one was surprised when the House obediently handed down its senatus consultant, nor when the Assembly of the People voted overwhelmingly to ratify it. Marcus Licinius Crassus was more solidly commander in the war against Spartacus than Pompey in Nearer Spain; Pompey's imperium was bestowed by Senate alone, it was not a law on Rome's tablets. With the same efficiency that had made a huge success out of an enterprise as dubious as training dirt cheap slaves in expensive skills, Marcus Crassus went to work at once upon this new challenge. The first thing he did was to announce the names of his legates: Lucius Quinctius, that fifty two year old nuisance to consuls and law courts; Marcus Mummius, almost of praetor's age; Quintus Marcius Rufus, somewhat younger but in the Senate; Gaius Pomptinus, a young Military Man; and Quintus Arrius, the only veteran of the war against Spartacus whom Crassus cared to keep. He then declared that as the consuls' legions were reduced from four to two by casualties and desertions, he would use only the top twelve of the twenty four tribunes of the soldiers, but not the present year's tribunes of the soldiers; their term was almost expired, and he thought nothing would be worse for these unsatisfactory legions than to change their immediate commanders scarcely a month into the campaign. Therefore he would call up next year's tribunes of the soldiers early. He also asked for one of next year's quaestors by name Gnaeus Tremellius Scrofa, of an old praetorian family. In the meantime he removed himself to Capua and sent out agents among his veteran soldiers from the days when he fought Carbo and the Samnites. He needed to enlist six legions very quickly. Some of his critics remembered that his soldiers hadn't liked his reluctance to share the spoils of towns like Tuder, and predicted that he would get few volunteers. But whether it was memories or hearts the years had softened, his veterans flocked to Crassus's eagles. By the beginning of November, when word had come that the Spartacani had turned around and were heading back down the Via Aemilia again, Crassus was almost ready to move. First, however, it was time to deal with the remnants of the consuls' legions, who had never been shifted from the camp at Firmum Picenum after the combined defeat of Gellius and Clodianus. They comprised twenty cohorts (which were the number of cohorts in two legions) but were the survivors of four legions, so few of them had fought together as a legionary unit. It had not been possible to transfer them to Capua until Crassus's own six legions were formed and organized; so few legions had been raised during the past years that half of the camps around Capua had been closed and dismantled. When Crassus sent Marcus Mummius and the twelve tribunes of the soldiers to pick up these twenty cohorts from Firmum Picenum, he was aware that Spartacus and his Spartacani were drawing close to Ariminum. Mummius was issued strict orders. He was to avoid any sort of contact with Spartacus, thought to be still well to the north of Firmum Picenum. Unfortunately for Mummius, Spartacus had moved his troops independently of his camp followers and his baggage train once he reached Ariminum, knowing that a threat to his rear was nonexistent. Thus it was that at about the same moment as Mummius arrived at the camp built by Gellius and Clodianus, so did the leading echelons of the Spartacani. A clash was inevitable. Mummius did his best, but there was little either he or his tribunes of the soldiers (Caesar was among them) could do. None of them knew the troops, the troops had never been properly trained, and they feared Spartacus the way children feared nursery bogeys. To call what ensued a battle was impossible; the Spartacani just rolled through the camp as if it didn't exist, while the panicked soldiers of the consuls' legions scattered in all directions. They threw down their weapons and pulled off their shirts of mail and helmets, anything which would slow their flight; the tardy perished, the fleet of foot got away. Not bothering to pursue, the Spartacani streamed onward, merely pausing to pick up abandoned arms and armor and strip the corpses of those who had not escaped. "There was nothing you could have done to avert this," said Caesar to Mummius. "The fault lay in our intelligence." "Marcus Crassus will be furious!" cried Mummius, despairing. "I'd call that an understatement," said Caesar grimly. "But the Spartacani are an undisciplined lot, all the same." "Over a hundred thousand!" They were camped atop a hill not far from the vast collection of people still rolling southward; Caesar, whose eyes saw into far distances, pointed. "Of soldiers he has not more than eighty thousand, maybe less. What we're looking at now are camp followers women, children, even men who don't seem to be bearing arms. And there are at least fifty thousand of them. Spartacus has a millstone around his neck. He has to drag the families and personal effects of his soldiers with him. You're looking at a homeless people, not an army, Mummius." Mummius turned away. "Well, there's no reason to linger here. Marcus Crassus has to be informed what happened. The sooner, the better." "The Spartacani will be gone in a day or two. Might I suggest that we remain here until they are gone, then gather up the men of the consuls' legions? If they're let, they'll disappear forever. I think Marcus Crassus would be better pleased to see them, whatever their state of disarray," said Caesar. Arrested, Mummius looked at his senior tribune of the soldiers. You're a thinking sort of fellow, Caesar, aren't you? You're quite right. We should round the wretches up and bring them back with us. Otherwise our general's fury will know no bounds."
Five cohorts lay dead among the ruins of the camp, as did most of the centurions. Fifteen cohorts had survived. It took Mummius eleven days to track them down and muster them, not as difficult a task as Mummius for one had feared; their wits were more scattered than their persons. Clad only in tunics and sandals, the fifteen cohorts were marched to Crassus, now in camp outside Bovianum. He had caught a detachment of Spartacani which had wandered off to the west of the main body and killed six thousand, but Spartacus himself was now well on his way toward Venusia, and Crassus had not deemed it clever to follow him into country unfavorable to a much smaller force. It was now the beginning of December, but as the calendar was forty days ahead of the seasons, winter was yet to come. The general listened to Mummius in an ominous silence. Then: "I do not hold you to blame, Marcus Mummius," he said, "but what am I to do with fifteen cohorts of men who cannot be trusted and have no stomach for a fight?" No one answered. Crassus knew exactly what he was going to do, despite his question. Every man present understood that, but no man present other than Crassus knew what he was going to do. Slowly the mild eyes traveled from one face to another, lingered upon Caesar's, moved on. "How many are they by head?" he asked. "Seven thousand five hundred, Marcus Crassus. Five hundred soldiers to the cohort," said Mummius. "I will decimate them," said Crassus. A profound silence fell; no one moved a muscle. "Parade the whole army tomorrow at sunrise and have everything ready. Caesar, you are a pontifex, you will officiate. Choose your victim for the sacrifice. Ought it to be to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, or to some other god?" "I think we should offer to Jupiter Stator, Marcus Crassus. He is the stayer of fleeing soldiers. And to Sol Indiges. And Bellona. The victim ought to be a black bull calf." Mummius, your tribunes of the soldiers will see to the lots. Except for Caesar." After which the general dismissed his staff, who moved out of the command tent without finding a single word to say to each other. Decimation! At sunrise Crassus's six legions were assembled side by side in their ranks; facing them, paraded in ten rows each of seven hundred and fifty men, stood the soldiers who were to be decimated. Mummius had worked feverishly to devise the quickest and simplest method of procedure, as the most important numerical division for decimation was the decury of ten men; it went without saying that Crassus himself had been an enormous help with the logistics. They stood as Mummius and his tribunes of the soldiers had rounded them up, clad only in tunics and sandals, but each man held a cudgel in his right hand and had been numbered off from one to ten for the lots. Branded cowards, they looked cowards, for not one among them could stand without visibly shaking, every face was a study in terror, and the sweat rolled off them despite the early morning chill. "Poor things," said Caesar to his fellow tribune of the soldiers, Gaius Popillius. "I don't know which appalls them more the thought of being the one to die, or the thought of being one of the nine who must kill him. They're not warlike." "They're too young," said Popillius, a little sadly. "That's usually an advantage," said Caesar, who wore his pontifical toga today, a rich and striking garment composed entirely of broad scarlet and purple stripes. "What does one know at seventeen or eighteen? There are no wives and children at home to worry about. Youth is turbulent, in need of an outlet for violent impulses. Better battle than wine and women and tavern brawls in battle, the State at least gets something out of them that's useful to the State." "You're a hard man," said Popillius. "No. Just a practical one." Crassus was ready to begin. Caesar moved to where the ritual trappings were laid out, drawing a fold of toga over his head. Every legion carried its own priest and augur, and it was one of the military augurs who inspected the black bull calf's liver. But because decimation was confined to the imperium of a proconsular general, it required a higher religious authority than legionary Religious, which was why Caesar had been deputed, and why Caesar had to verify the augur's findings. Having announced in a loud voice that Jupiter Stator, Sol Indiges and Bellona were willing to accept the sacrifice, he then said the concluding prayers. And nodded to Crassus that he could begin. Assured of divine approval, Crassus spoke. A tall tribunal had been erected to one side of the guilty cohorts, on which stood Crassus and his legates. The only tribune of the soldiers who was a part of this group was Caesar, the officiating priest; the rest of them were clustered around a table in the middle of the space between the veteran legions and the cohorts to be decimated, for it was their duty to apportion the lots. "Legates, tribunes, cadets, centurions and men of the ranks," cried Crassus in his high, carrying voice, "you are gathered here today to witness a punishment so rare and so severe that it is many generations since it was last exacted. Decimation is reserved for soldiers who have proven themselves unworthy to be members of Rome's legions, who have deserted their eagles in the most craven and unpardonable fashion. I have ordered that the fifteen cohorts standing here in their tunics shall be decimated for very good reason: since they were inducted into military service at the beginning of this year they have consistently fled from the scene of every battle they were asked to fight. And now in their last debacle they have committed the ultimate soldier's crime they abandoned their weapons and armor on the field for the enemy to pick up and use. None of them deserves to live, but it is not within my power to execute every single man. That is the prerogative of the Senate, and the Senate alone. So I will exercise my right as the proconsular commander in chief to decimate their ranks, hoping that by doing so, I will inspire those men left alive to fight in future like Roman soldiers and to show the rest of you, my loyal and constant followers, that I will not tolerate cowardice! And may all our gods bear witness that I will have avenged the good name and honor of every Roman soldier!" As Crassus reached his peroration, Caesar tensed. If the men of the six legions assembled to watch cheered, then Crassus had the army's consent; but if his speech was greeted by silence, he was going to be in for a mutinous campaign. No one ever liked decimation. That was why no general practiced it. Was Crassus, so shrewd in business and politics, as shrewd in his judgement of Rome's veteran soldiers? The six legions cheered wholeheartedly. Watching him closely, Caesar saw a tiny sagging of relief in Crassus; so even he had not been sure! The dispersal of the lots began. There were seven hundred and fifty decuries, which meant that seven hundred and fifty men would die. A very long drawn out procedure which Crassus and Mummius had speeded up with some excellent organization. In a huge basket lay seven hundred and fifty tablets seventy five of them were numbered I, seventy five were numbered II, and so on, up to the number X. They had been thrown in at random, then shuffled well. The tribune of the soldiers Gaius Popillius had been deputed to count seventy five of these jumbled little two inch squares of thin wood into each of ten smaller baskets, one of which he gave to each of the ten remaining tribunes of the soldiers to disperse. That was why the guilty cohorts had been arranged in ten well spaced rows, seventy five well spaced decuries to the row. A tribune of the soldiers simply walked from one end of his row to the other, stopping before each decury and pulling a tablet from his basket. He called out the number, the man allocated it stepped forward, and he then passed on to the next decury. Behind him the slaughter began. Even in this was order, meticulousness. Centurions from Crassus's own six legions who did not know any of the men in the guilty cohorts had been ordered to supervise the actual executions. Few of the centurions who had belonged to the fifteen cohorts had lived, but those who did live had not been excused the punishment, so they took their chances with the rankers. Death was meted out to the man who had drawn the lot by the other nine men of his decury, who were required to beat him to death with their cudgels. In that way no one escaped suffering, be they the nine who lived or the one who died. The supervising centurions knew how it should be done, and said so. "You, kneel and don't flinch," to the condemned man. "You, strike his head to kill," to the man farthest left. "You, strike to kill," to the next man, and so along the nine, who were all forced to bring down their knob headed sticks upon the back of the kneeling man's defenseless cranium. That was as kind as the punishment could be, and at least stripped it of any element of the mindless mob beating wildly at all parts of the victim's body. Because none of these men had the heart to kill, not every blow was a killing one, and some blows missed entirely. But the supervising centurions kept on barking, barking, barking to strike hard and strike accurately, and as the process proceeded down the line of decuries it became more workmanlike, quicker. Such is repetition combined with resignation to the inevitable. In thirteen hours the decimation was done, the last of it in darkness lit by torches. Crassus dismissed his footsore and bored army, obliged to stand until the last man was dead. The seven hundred and fifty corpses were distributed across thirty pyres and burned; instead of being sent home to the relatives, the ashes were tipped into the camp latrine trenches. Nor would their wills be honored. What money and property they left was forfeited to the Treasury, to help pay for all those abandoned weapons, helmets, shields, shirts of mail and legionary gear. Not one man who had witnessed the first decimation in long years was left untouched by it; on most its effect was profound. Now fourteen somewhat under strength cohorts, the wretched men who had lived through it swallowed both fear and pride to work frantically at becoming the kind of legionaries Crassus demanded. Seven more cohorts of properly trained recruits came from Capua before the army moved on and were incorporated into the fourteen to make two full strength legions. As Crassus still referred to them as the consuls' legions, the twelve tribunes of the soldiers were appointed to command them, with Caesar, the senior, at the head of Legio I.
While Marcus Crassus decimated the ranks of those who could not screw up the courage to face the Spartacani, Spartacus himself was holding funeral games for Crixus outside the city of Venusia. It was not his custom to take prisoners, but he had plucked three hundred men of the consuls' legions (and some others he intended to keep alive for the moment) from their camp at Firmum Picenum; all the way to Venusia he trained them as gladiators, half as Gauls, half as Thracians. Then dressing them in the finest equipment, he made them fight to the death in honor of Crixus. The ultimate victor he dispatched in an equally Roman way he had the man first flogged and then beheaded. Having drunk the blood of three hundred enemy men, the shade of Crixus was eminently satisfied. The funeral games of Crixus had served another purpose; as his enormous host feasted and relaxed, Spartacus went among them in a more personal way than he had outside Mutina, and persuaded everyone that the answer to the vexed question of a permanent and fruitful home lay in Sicily. Though he had stripped every granary and silo bare along the route of his march, and laid in great stores of cheeses, pulses, root vegetables and durable fruits, and drove with him thousands of sheep, pigs, hens and ducks, keeping his people from starving haunted him far more than the specter of any Roman army. Winter was coming; they must, he resolved, be established in Sicily before the very cold weather descended. So in December he moved south again to the Gulf of Tarentum, where the hapless communities of that rich plain of many rivers suffered the loss of autumn harvest and early winter vegetables. At Thurii a city he had already sacked on his first visit to the area he turned his host inland, marched up the valley of the Crathis and emerged onto the Via Popillia. No Roman troops lay in wait; using the road to cross the Bruttian mountains comfortably, he came down to the small fishing port of Scyllaeum. And there across the narrow strait it loomed Sicily! One tiny sea voyage and the long travels were over. But what a hideous voyage it was! Scylla and Charybdis inhabited those perilous waters. Just outside the Bay of Scyllaeum, Scylla lashed and gnashed her triple sets of teeth in each of her six heads, while the dogs' heads girdling her loins slavered and howled. And if a ship was lucky enough to sneak by her as she slept, yet there remained Sicilian Charybdis, roaring round and round and round in a huge, sucking whirlpool of greed. Not, of course, that Spartacus himself believed in such tall tales; but without his realizing it he was losing whole layers of his Romanness, peeling them away like onion scales down to a kernel more primitive, more childlike. His life had not been lived in a truly Roman fashion since he had been expelled from the legions of Cosconius, and that was almost five years ago. The woman he had taken up with believed implicitly in Scylla and Charybdis, so did many of his followers, and sometimes just sometimes he saw the frightful creatures in his dreams. As well as harboring a big fishing fleet which pursued the migrating tunny twice a year, Scyllaeum accommodated pirates. The proximity of the Via Popillia and Roman legions passing to and from Sicily prohibited to any large pirate fleets a haven there, but the few small scale freebooters who used Scyllaeum were in the act of beaching their trim, undecked little vessels for the winter when that huge tumult of people descended upon the place. Leaving his army to gorge itself on fish, Spartacus sought out the leader of the local pirates at once and asked him if he knew any pirate admirals who had command of big numbers of big ships. Why yes, several! was the answer. "Then bring them to see me," said Spartacus. "I need an immediate passage to Sicily for some thousands of my best soldiers, and I'm willing to pay a thousand talents of silver to any men who guarantee to ship us over within the month." Though Crixus and Oenomaus were dead, two replacements had risen to the surface of the polyglot collection of men Spartacus used as his legates and tribunes. Castus and Gannicus were both Samnites who had fought with Mutilus during the Italian War and Pontius Telesinus during the war against Sulla; they were martial by nature and had some experience of command. Time had taught Spartacus that his host refused to march as an army unless the enemy threatened many men had women, quite a few children, some even parents in the train. It was therefore impossible for one man to control or direct such wayward masses; instead, Spartacus had split the host into three divisions with three separate baggage columns, commanding the largest and foremost himself, and giving the other two to Castus and Gannicus. When word came that two pirate admirals were coming to see him, Spartacus summoned Aluso, Castus and Gannicus. "It looks as if I'll have ships enough to transport twenty thousand men across to Pelorus very soon," he said, "but it's the vast bulk of my people I'm going to have to leave behind who concern me. Some months might go by before I can bring them to Sicily. What do you think about leaving them here in Scyllaeum? Is there food enough? Or ought I to send everyone left behind back to Bradanus country? The local farmers and fishermen are saying it's going to be a cold winter." Castus, who was older and more seasoned than Gannicus, gave this some deliberate thought before answering.
"Actually, Spartacus, it's not bad pickings hereabouts. West of the harbor is a little sort of promontory, flat and fertile. I reckon the whole lot of us could last there without digging too deep into the supplies for oh, a month, maybe two months. And if twenty thousand of the biggest eaters are in Sicily, three months." Spartacus made up his mind. "Then everyone will stay here. Move the camps to the west of the town and start the women and children growing things. Even cabbages and turnips will help." When the two Samnites had gone, Aluso turned her wild wolfs eyes upon her husband and growled in the back of her throat. It always made his hackles rise, that eerie animalistic way she had whenever the prophetic spirit invaded her. "Beware, Spartacus!" she said. "What is there to beware of?" he asked, frowning. She shook her head and growled again. I do not know. Something. Someone. It is coming through the snow." "It won't snow for at least a month, perhaps longer," he said gently. "By then I'll be in Sicily with the pick of my men, and I doubt the campaign in Sicily will extend us. Is it those who will wait here ought to beware?'' "No," she said positively, "it is you." "Sicily is soft and not well defended. I won't stand in any danger from militiamen and grain barons." She stiffened, then shivered. "You will never get there, Spartacus," she said. "You will never get to Sicily." But the morrow gave the lie to that, for two pirate admirals arrived in Scyllaeum, and both were so famous he even knew their names: Pharnaces and Megadates. They had commenced their pirate careers far to the east of Sicily, in the waters of the Euxine Sea. For the last ten years, however, they had controlled the seas between Sicily and Africa, raiding anything smaller than a well guarded Roman grain fleet. When they felt like it they even sailed into the harbor of Syracuse right under the nose of the governor! to pick up provisions and vintage wine. Both of them, thought the astonished Spartacus, looked like sleekly successful merchants pallid, plump, finicky. "You know who I am," he said bluntly. "Will you do business with me despite the Romans?" They exchanged sly smiles. "We do business everywhere and with everyone despite the Romans," said Pharnaces. "I need passage for twenty thousand of my soldiers between here and Pelorus." "A very short journey, but one winter makes hazardous," said Pharnaces, evidently the spokesman. "The local fishermen tell me it's quite possible." "Indeed, indeed." "Then will you help me?" Let me see.... Twenty thousand men at two hundred and fifty per ship it's only a matter of miles, they won't care if they're packed in like figs in a jar is eighty ships." Pharnaces grimaced slightly. "That many of large enough size we do not have, Spartacus. Twenty ships between us." "Five thousand at a time," said Spartacus, brow wrinkled. "Well, it will have to be four trips, that's all! How much, and when can you start?" Like twin lizards, they blinked in perfect unison. "My dear fellow, don't you haggle?" asked Megadates. "I don't have time. How much, and when can you start?" Pharnaces took over again. "Fifty silver talents per ship per voyage four thousand in all," he said. It was Spartacus's turn to blink. "Four thousand! That's just about all the money I've got." "Take it or leave it," said the admirals in perfect unison. If you guarantee to have your ships here within five days I'll take it," said Spartacus. Give us the four thousand in advance and we guarantee it," said Pharnaces. Spartacus looked cunning. "Oh no you don't!" he exclaimed. "Half now, the other half when the job's finished." "Done!" said Pharnaces and Megadates in perfect unison. Aluso had not been allowed to attend the meeting. For reasons he wasn't sure of, Spartacus found himself reluctant to tell her what had transpired; perhaps what she saw for him was a watery grave, if he was never to reach Sicily. But of course she got it out of him, and to his surprise nodded happily. "A good price," she said. "You'll recoup your money when you reach Sicily." "I thought you said I wasn't going to reach Sicily!" "That was yesterday, and the vision lied. Today I see with clarity, and all is well." So two thousand talents of silver were dug out of the carts and loaded aboard the beautiful gilded quinquereme with the purple and gold sail that had brought Pharnaces and Megadates to Scyllaeum. Its mighty oars beating the water, it crawled out of the bay. "Like a centipede," said Aluso. Spartacus laughed. "You're right, a centipede! Perhaps that's why it doesn't fear Scylla." "It's too big for Scylla to chew." "Scylla is a clump of wicked rocks," said Spartacus. "Scylla," said Aluso, "is an entity." "In five days' time I will know for sure." Five days later the first five thousand men were assembled in Scyllaeum port itself, each man with his gear beside him, his armor on his back, his helmet on his head, his weapons at his side, and a ghastly fear in his chest. He was to sail between Scylla and Charybdis! Only the fact that most of the men had talked to the fishermen gave them the courage to go through with it; the fishermen swore Scylla and Charybdis existed, but knew the charms to soothe them to sleep and promised to use them. Though the weather had been good for all five days and the sea calm, the twenty pirate ships didn't come. Brow knotted, Spartacus conferred with Castus and Gannicus and decided to keep his five thousand men where they were overnight. Six days, seven days, eight days. Still the pirate ships didn't come. Ten days, fifteen days. The five thousand men had long since been sent back to their camps, but every day Spartacus was to be seen standing on the high point at the harbor entrance, hand shading his eyes, peering into the south. They would come! Must come! "You have been swindled," said Aluso on the sixteenth day, when Spartacus showed no sign of going to his lookout. The tears welled up, he swallowed convulsively. "I have been swindled," he said. "Oh, Spartacus, the world is full of cheats and liars!" she cried. At least what we have done has been done in good faith, and you are a father to these poor people! I see a home for us there across the water, I see it so clearly I can almost touch it! And yet we will never reach it. The first time I read the bones I saw that, but later the bones too lied to me. Cheats and liars, cheats and liars!" Her eyes glowed, she growled. "But beware of him who comes out of the snow!" Spartacus didn't hear. He was weeping too bitterly. "I am a laughingstock," said Spartacus to Castus and Gannicus later in the day. "They sailed off with our money knowing they wouldn't come back. Two thousand talents for a few moments' work." "It wasn't your fault," said Gannicus, usually the silent one. "Even in business there's supposed to be honor." Castus shrugged. "They're not businessmen, Gannicus. All they do is take. A pirate is an undisguised thief." "Well," said Spartacus, sighing, "it's done. What matters now is our own future. We must continue to exist in Italy until the summer, when we will commandeer every fishing boat between Campania and Rhegium and take ourselves across to Sicily." The existence of a new Roman army in the peninsula was known, of course, but Spartacus had wandered the land with virtual impunity for so long now that he took little notice of Roman military efforts. His scouts had grown lazy, and he himself not so much lazy as indifferent. Over the time that he had shepherded his vast flock, he had come to see his purpose in an unmartial light. He was the patriarch in search of a home for his children, neither king nor general. And now he would have to start them moving again. But where to? They ate so much!
When Crassus began his own march into the south, he went at the head of a military organization dedicated to one end the extirpation of the Spartacani. Nor for the moment was he in any hurry. He knew exactly whereabouts his quarry was, and had guessed that its objective was Sicily. Which made no difference to Crassus. If he had to fight the Spartacani in Sicily, all the better. He had been in touch with the governor (still Gaius Verres) and been assured that the slaves of Sicily were in no condition to foment a third uprising against Rome even if the Spartacani came. Verres had put the militia on alert and stationed them around Pelorus, conserving his Roman troops for whatever shape a campaign might assume, and sure that Crassus would arrive hard on the heels of the Spartacani to take the brunt of the action. But nothing happened. The whole enormous mass of Spartacani continued to camp around Scyllaeum, it seemed because no shipping was available. Then Gaius Verres wrote.
I have heard a curious tale, Marcus Crassus. It seems that Spartacus approached the pirate admirals Pharnaces and Megadates and asked them to ferry twenty thousand of his best troops from Scyllaeum to Pelorus. The pirates agreed to do this for a price of four thousand talents two thousand to be paid as a deposit, the other two thousand upon completion of the job. Spartacus gave them two thousand talents and off they sailed. Laughing their heads off! For no more than a promise they had enriched themselves mightily. While some may say that they were fools for not proceeding with the scheme and thereby earning themselves another two thousand talents, it appears Pharnaces and Megadates preferred the fortune they had got for doing no work at all. They had formed a poor opinion of Spartacus himself, and foresaw a risk in trying to earn the other two thousand. My own personal opinion is that Spartacus is a rank amateur, a hayseed. Pharnaces and Megadates gulled him as easily as a Roman trickster can gull an Apulian. Had there been a decent army in Italy last year it would have rolled him up, I am sure of it. All he has on his side are sheer numbers. But when he faces you, Marcus Crassus, he will not prosper. Spartacus has no luck, whereas you, dear Marcus Crassus, have proven yourself one of Fortune's favorites.
When he read that final sentence, Caesar burst out laughing. "What does he want?" he asked, handing the note back to Crassus. "Is he in need of a loan? Ye gods, that man eats money!" "I wouldn't lend to him," said Crassus. "Verres won't last." "I hope you're right! How does he know so much about what happened between the pirate strategoi and Spartacus?" Crassus grinned; it worked a small miracle upon his big smooth face, which suddenly looked young and naughty. Oh, I daresay they told him all about it when he applied for his cut of the two thousand talents." "Do you think they gave him a cut?" "Undoubtedly. He lets them use Sicily as their base." They were sitting alone in the general's command tent, in a stout camp pitched beside the Via Popillia outside Terina, a hundred miles from Scyllaeum. It was the beginning of February, and winter had begun; two braziers produced a glow of heat. Just why Marcus Crassus had settled upon the twenty eight year old Caesar as his particular friend was a source of great debate among his legates, who were more puzzled than jealous. Until Crassus had begun to share his leisure moments with Caesar he had owned no friends at all, therefore no legate felt himself passed over or supplanted. The conundrum arose out of the incongruity of the relationship, for there were sixteen years between them in age, their attitudes to money lay at opposite poles, they looked inappropriate when seen together, and no mutual literary or artistic leaning existed. Men like Lucius Quinctius had known Crassus for years, and had had close dealings with him both political and commercial without ever being able to claim a deep seated friendship. Yet from the time Crassus had co opted this year's tribunes of the soldiers two months too early, he had sought Caesar out, made overtures and found them reciprocated. The truth was actually very simple. Each man had recognized in the other someone who was going to matter in the future, and each man nursed much the same political ambitions. Had this recognition not taken place, the friendship could not have come about. But once it existed other factors came into play to bind them more tightly. The streak of hardness which was so evident in Crassus also lay in the smoother, utterly charming Caesar; neither man cherished illusions about his noble world; both had burrowed deeply into mines of common sense and neither cared very much about personal luxuries. The differences between them were superficial, though they were blinding: Caesar the handsome rake developing a formidable reputation as a womanizer versus Crassus the absolutely faithful family man; Caesar the brilliant intellectual with style and flair versus Crassus the plodding pragmatist. An odd couple. That was the verdict among the fascinated observers, who all from that time on began to see Caesar as a force to be reckoned with; for if he was not, why would Marcus Crassus have bothered with him? "It will snow tonight," said Crassus. "In the morning we'll march. I want to use the snow, not become hampered by it." "It would make so much sense," said Caesar, "if our calendar and the seasons coincided! I can't abide inaccuracy!" Crassus stared. "What provoked that remark?" "The fact that it's February and we're only beginning to feel winter." "You sound like a Greek. Provided one knows the date and waggles a hand outside the door to feel the temperature, what can it matter?'' "It matters because it's slipshod and untidy!" said Caesar. "If the world was too tidy it would be hard to make money." "Harder to hide it, you mean," said Caesar with a grin.
When Scyllaeum drew near the scouts reported that Spartacus still camped within the little promontory beyond the port, though there were signs that he might move fairly soon. His Spartacani had eaten the region out. Crassus and Caesar rode ahead with the army's engineers and an escort of troopers, aware that Spartacus owned no cavalry; he had tried to train some of his foot soldiers to ride, and for a while had attempted to tame the wild horses roaming the Lucanian forests and mountains, but had had no success with either men or mounts. The snow was falling steadily in a windless afternoon when the two Roman noblemen and their company began to prowl the country just behind the triangular outthrust wherein lay the Spartacani; if any watch had been set it was a halfhearted one, for they encountered no other men. The snow of course was a help, it muffled noise and coated horses and riders in white. "Better than I hoped," said Crassus with much satisfaction as the party turned to ride back to camp. If we build a ditch and a wall between those two ravines, we'll shut Spartacus up in his present territory very nicely." "It won't hold them for long," said Caesar. "Long enough for my purposes. I want them hungry, I want them cold, I want them desperate. And when they break out, I want them heading north into Lucania." "You'll accomplish the last, at any rate. They'll try at our weakest point, which won't be to the south. No doubt you'll want the consuls' legions doing most of the digging." Crassus looked surprised. "They can dig, but alongside everybody else. Ditch and wall have to be finished within one market interval, and that means the hoariest old veterans will be plying spades too. Besides, the exercise will keep them warm." "I'll engineer it for you," Caesar offered, but without expectation of assent. Sure enough, Crassus declined. "I would rather you did, but it isn't possible. Lucius Quinctius is my senior legate. The job has to go to him." "A pity. He's got too much office and oratory in him." Office and oratory or no, Lucius Quinctius tackled the job of walling the Spartacani in with huge enthusiasm. Luckily he had the good sense to lean on the expertise of his engineers; Caesar was right in thinking him no fortification architect. Fifteen feet wide and fifteen feet deep, the ditch dived into the ravines at either end, and the earth removed from it was piled up into a log reinforced wall topped with a palisade and watchtowers. From ravine to ravine, the ditch, wall, palisade and watchtowers extended for a distance of eight miles, and were completed in eight days despite constant snow. Eight camps one for each legion were spaced at regular intervals beneath the wall; the general would have ample soldiers to man his eight miles of fortifications. Spartacus became aware that Crassus had arrived the moment activity began if he had not been aware earlier but seemed almost uninterested. All of a sudden he bent the energies of his men toward constructing a huge fleet of rafts which apparently he intended should be towed behind Scyllaeum's fishing boats. To the watching Romans it appeared that he pinned his faith on an escape across the strait, and thought the scheme foolproof enough to ignore the fact that his landward escape route was rapidly being cut off. Came the day when this mass exodus by water began; those Romans not obliged by duty to be elsewhere climbed the flank of nearby Mount Sila for the best view of what happened in Scyllaeum harbor. A disaster. Those rafts which remained afloat long enough to load with people could not negotiate the entrance, let alone the open strait beyond; the fishing boats were not built to tow such heavy, unwieldy objects. "At least it doesn't seem as if many of them drowned," said Caesar to Crassus as they watched from Mount Sila. "That," said Crassus, voice detached, "Spartacus probably thinks a pity. Fewer mouths to feed." "I think," said Caesar, "that Spartacus loves them. The way a self appointed king might love his people." "Self appointed?" "Kings who are born to rule care little for their people," said Caesar, who had known a king born to rule. He pointed to where the shores of the bay were scenes of frenzied activity. "I tell you, Marcus Crassus, that man loves every last ungrateful individual in his vast horde! If he didn't, he would have cut himself off from them a year ago. I wonder who he really is?" "Starting with what Gaius Cassius had to say, I'm having that question investigated," said Crassus, and prepared to descend. "Come on, Caesar, you've seen enough. Love! If he does, then he's a fool." "Oh, he's definitely that," said Caesar, following. "What have you found out?" "Almost everything except his real name. That may not come to light. Some fool of an archivist, thinking Sulla's Tabularium would hold military records as well as everything else, didn't bother to put them in a waterproof place. They're indecipherable, and Cosconius doesn't remember any names. At the moment I'm chasing his minor tribunes." "Good luck! They won't remember any names either." Crassus gave a grunt which might have been a short laugh. "Did you know there's a myth about him running around Rome that he's a Thracian?" "Well, everybody knows he's a Thracian. Thracian or Gaul there are only the two kinds." Caesar's laugh rang out joyously. "However, I take it that this myth is being assiduously disseminated by the Senate's agents." Crassus stopped, turned to gaze back and up at Caesar, a look of startled surprise on his face. "Oh, you are clever!" "It's true, I am clever." "Well, and doesn't it make sense?" "Certainly," said Caesar. "We've had quite enough renegade Romans of late. We'd be fools to add one more to a list that includes such military luminaries as Gaius Marius, Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Quintus Sertorius, wouldn't we? Better by far to have him a Thracian." "Huh!" Crassus emitted a genuine grunt. "I'd dearly love to set eyes on him!" "You may when we bring him to battle. He rides a very showy dappled grey horse tricked out with red leather tack and every kind of knightly knob and medallion. It used to belong to Varinius. Besides, Cassius and Manlius saw him at close quarters, so we have a good description. And he's a distinctive kind of fellow very big, tall, and fair."
A grim duel began which went on for over a month, Spartacus trying to break through Crassus's fortifications and Crassus throwing him back. The Roman high command knew that food must be running very short in the Spartacani camps when every soldier Spartacus possessed Caesar had estimated the total at seventy thousand attacked along the entire eight mile front, trying to find the Roman weak point. It seemed to the Spartacani that they had found it toward the middle of the wall, where the ditch appeared to have crumbled under an onslaught of spring water; Spartacus poured men across and over the wall, only to run them into a trap. Twelve thousand Spartacani died, the rest receded. After that the Thracian who was not a Thracian tortured some prisoners he had saved from the consuls' legions, scattering his teams of men with red hot pincers and pokers where he thought the maximum number of Roman soldiers would see the atrocity and hear the screams of their comrades. But after experiencing the horror of decimation Crassus's legions feared him a great deal more than they pitied the poor fellows being ripped and burned, and coped with it by electing not to watch, stuffing their ears with wool. Desperate, Spartacus produced his most prestigious prisoner, the primus pilus centurion of Gellius's old second legion, and nailed him to a cross through wrist and ankle joints without according him the mercy of broken limbs to help him die. Crassus's answer was to set his best archers along the top of his wall; the centurion died in a blizzard of arrows. As March came in Spartacus sent the woman Aluso to sue for terms of surrender. Crassus saw her in his command hut, in the presence of his legates and tribunes of the soldiers. "Why hasn't Spartacus come himself?" asked Crassus. She gave him a compassionate smile. "Because without my husband the Spartacani would disintegrate," she said, "and he does not trust you, Marcus Crassus, even under truce." "Then he's cleverer these days than he was when he let the pirates swindle him out of two thousand talents." But Aluso was not the kind to rise to any bait, so she did not answer, even with a look. Her appearance was, Caesar thought, deliberately contrived to unsettle a civilized reception committee; she appeared the archetypal barbarian. Her flaxen hair streamed wild and stringy over back and shoulders, she wore some kind of blackish felt tunic with long sleeves, and beneath it tight legged trousers. Over the clothing of arms and ankles she blazed with golden chains and bracelets, had loaded the long lobes of her ears with more gold, and her henna stained fingers with rings. Around her neck she wore several loops of tiny bird skulls strung together, and from the solid gold belt at her trim waist there dangled grisly trophies a severed hand still owning some nails and shreds of skin, a child's skull, the backbone of a cat or dog complete with tail. The whole was finished with a magnificent wolf pelt, paws knotted on her chest, the head with bared teeth and jewels for eyes perched above her brow. With all this, she was not unattractive to the silent men who watched her, though none would have called her beautiful; her kind of face with its light, mad looking eyes was too alien. On Crassus, however, she failed to make the impression she had striven for. Crassus was proof against any attraction save money. So he stared at her in exactly the same way as he stared at everyone, with what seemed a gentle calmness. "Speak, woman," he said. I am to ask you for terms of surrender, Marcus Crassus. We have no food left, and the women and children are starving in order that our soldiers may eat. My husband is not the kind of man who can bear to see the helpless suffer. He would rather give himself and his army up. Only tell me the terms and I will tell him. And then tomorrow I will come back with his answer." The general turned his back. Over his shoulder he said, his Greek far purer than hers, "You may tell your husband that there are no terms under which 1 would accept his surrender. I will not permit him to surrender. He started this. Now he can see it through to the bitter end." She gasped, prepared for every contingency but that one. "I cannot tell him that! You must let him surrender!" "No," said Crassus, back still turned. His right hand moved, its fingers snapped. "Take her away, Marcus Mummius, and see her through our lines." It was some time later before Caesar could catch Crassus on his own, though he burned to discuss the interview. "You handled it brilliantly," he said. "She was so sure she would unsettle you." "Silly woman! My reports say she's a priestess of the Bessi, though I'd rather call her a witch. Most Romans are superstitious I've noticed you are, Caesar! but I am not. I believe in what I can see, and what I saw was a female of some slight intelligence who had got herself up as she imagined a gorgon might look." He laughed spontaneously. "I remember being told that when he was a young man Sulla went to a party dressed as Medusa. On his head he wore a wig of living snakes, and he frightened the life out of everyone there. But you know, and I know, that it wasn't the snakes frightened the life out of anyone. It was simply Sulla. Now if she had that quality, I might have quaked in my boots." "I agree. But she does have the second sight." "Many people have the second sight! I've known dear old grannies as dithery and fluffy as lambs who had the second sight, and grand looking advocates you wouldn't think had a single corner of their minds that wasn't solid law. Anyway, what makes you think she has the second sight?'' "Because she came to the interview more frightened of you than you could ever have been of her."
For a month the weather had been "set," as the mother of Quintus Sertorius might have put it nights well below freezing point, days not much warmer, blue skies, snow turned to ice underfoot. But after the Ides of March had gone there came a terrible storm which started as sleet and ended with snow piling up and up. Spartacus seized his chance. Where the wall and ditch fused into the ravine closest to Scyllaeum and the oldest of Crassus's veteran legions had its camp the whole one hundred thousand Spartacani left alive hurled themselves into a frantic struggle to bridge the ditch and climb over the wall. Logs, stones, the dead bodies of humans and animals, even large pieces of loot were flung into the trench, heaped up to surmount the palisade. Like the shades of the dead the enormous mass of people rolled in wave after wave across this makeshift passage and fled into the teeth of the storm. No one opposed them; Crassus had sent the legion a message not to take up arms, but to remain quietly inside its camp. Disorganized and haphazard, the flight unraveled what little structure the Spartacani host had owned beyond hope of knitting it up again. While the fighting men better led and disciplined floundered north on the Via Popillia with Spartacus, Castus and Gannicus, the bulk of the women, children, aged and noncombatants became so lost they entered the forests of Mount Sila; amid the tangles of low branches, rocks, undergrowth, most of them lay down and died, too cold and too hungry to struggle on. Those who did survive to see better weather came eventually upon Bruttian settlements, were recognized for what they were, and killed at once. Not that the fate of this segment of the Spartacani held any interest for Marcus Licinius Crassus. When the snow began to lessen he struck camp and moved his eight legions out onto the Via Popillia in the wake of the Spartacani soldiers. His progress was as plodding as an ox, for he was always methodical, always in possession of his general's wits. There was no use in chasing; cold, hunger and lack of real purpose would combine to slow the Spartacani down, as would the size of their army. Better to have the baggage train in the middle of the legionary column than run the risk of losing it. Sooner or later he would catch up. His scouts, however, were very busy, very swift. As March ground to its end they reported to Crassus that the Spartacani, having reached the river Silarus, had divided into two forces. One, under Spartacus, had continued up the Via Popillia toward Campania, while the other, under Castus and Gannicus, had struck east up the valley of the middle Silarus. "Good!" said Crassus. "We'll leave Spartacus alone for the moment and concentrate on getting rid of the two Samnites." The scouts then reported that Castus and Gannicus had not gone very far; they had encountered the prosperous little town of Volcei and were eating well for the first time in two months. No need to hurry! When the four legions preceding Crassus's baggage train came up, Castus and Gannicus were too busy feasting to notice. The Spartacani had spread without making more than an apology for a camp on the foreshores of a little lake which at this time of the year contained sweet, potable water; by autumn the same locale would have held few charms. Behind the lake was a mountain. Crassus saw immediately what he had to do, and decided not to wait for the four legions which followed the baggage train. "Pomptinus and Rufus, take twelve cohorts and sneak around the far side of the mountain. When you're in position, charge downhill. That will take you right into the middle of their camp? As soon as I see you I'll attack from the front. We'll squash them between us like a beetle." The plan should have worked. It would have worked, except for the vagaries of chance the best scouts could not divine. For when they saw how much food Volcei could provide, Castus and Gannicus sent word to Spartacus to retrace his footsteps, join the revelry. Spartacus duly retraced his footsteps and appeared on the far side of the lake just as Crassus launched his attack. The men belonging to Castus and Gannicus bolted into the midst of the newcomers, and all the Spartacani promptly vanished. Some generals would have clawed the air, but not Crassus. "Unfortunate. But eventually we'll succeed," he said, unruffled. A series of storms slowed everybody down. The armies of both sides lingered around the Silarus, though it appeared that it was now Spartacus's turn to leave the Via Popillia, while Castus and Gannicus used the road to march into Campania. Crassus lurked well in the rear, a fat spider bent on getting fatter. He too had decided to split his forces now that his eight legions were reunited; the baggage train, he knew, was safe. Two legions of infantry and all the cavalry were put under the command of Lucius Quinctius and Tremellius Scrofa, and ordered to be ready to follow whichever segment of Spartacani left the Via Popillia, while Crassus himself would pursue the segment on the road. Like a millstone he ground on; as his legion was attached to the general's division, Caesar could only marvel at the absolute tenacity and method of this extraordinary man. At Eburum, not far north of the Silarus, he caught Castus and Gannicus at last, and annihilated their army. Thirty thousand died on the field, tricked and trapped; only a very few managed to slip through the Roman lines and flee inland to find Spartacus. Greatest pleasure of all to every soldier in the victorious army was what Crassus discovered among the tumbled heaps of Spartacani baggage after the battle; the five eagles which had been taken when various Roman forces had been defeated, twenty six cohort standards, and the fasces belonging to five praetors. "Look at that!" cried Crassus, actually beaming. "Isn't it a wonderful sight?" The general now displayed the fact that when he needed to, he could move very fast indeed. Word came from Lucius Quinctius that he and Scrofa had been ambushed though without grievous losses and that Spartacus was still nearby. Crassus marched.
The grand undertaking had foundered. Left in the possession of Spartacus was the part of the army marching with him up to the sources of the Tanagrus River; that, and Aluso, and his son. When his defeat of Quinctius and Scrofa proved indecisive because their cavalry fleeter by far than infantry mustered and allowed the Roman foot to withdraw, Spartacus made no move to leave the area. Three little towns had provided his men with ample food for the moment, but what the next valley and the one after that held, he no longer had any idea. It was approaching spring; granaries were low, no vegetables had yet formed and plumped after the hard winter, the hens were scrawny, and the pigs (crafty creatures!) had gone into hiding in the woods. An obnoxious local from Potentia, the closest town, had taken great pleasure in journeying out to see Spartacus in order to tell him that Varro Lucullus was expected any day to land in Brundisium from Macedonia, and that the Senate had ordered him to reinforce Crassus immediately. "Your days are numbered, gladiator!" said the local with glee. "Rome is invincible!" "I should cut your throat," said the gladiator wearily. "Go ahead! I expect you to! And I don't care!" "Then I won't give you the satisfaction of a noble death. Just go home!" Aluso was listening. After the fellow had taken himself off (very disappointed that his lifeblood had not streamed out upon the ground) she moved close to Spartacus and put her hand gently upon his arm. "It finishes here," she said. "I know, woman." "I see you fall in battle, but I cannot see a death." "When I fall in battle I'll be dead." He was so very tired, and the catastrophe at Scyllaeum still haunted him. How could he look his men in the face knowing that it had been his own misguided carelessness which had ended in their being penned in by Crassus? The women and children were gone and he knew they would not reappear. They had all died from starvation somewhere in the wild Bruttian countryside. With no idea whether what the man from Potentia had told him about Varro Lucullus was true or not, he knew that it cut him off from Brundisium nonetheless. Crassus controlled the Via Popillia; the news of Castus and Gannicus had reached him even before he ambushed Quinctius and Scrofa. Nowhere to go. Nowhere, that is, except one last battlefield. And he was glad, glad, glad.... Neither birth nor ability had tailored him for such an enormous responsibility, the lives and welfare of a whole people. He was just an ordinary Roman of Italian family who had been born on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, and ought to have spent his life there alongside his father and his brother. Who did he think he was, to attempt to give birth to a new nation? Not noble enough, not educated enough, not grand enough. But there was some honor in dying a free man on a battlefield; he would never go back to a prison. Never. When word came that Crassus and his army were approaching, he took Aluso and his son and put them in a wagon harnessed to six mules far enough away from where he intended to make his last stand to ensure that they would elude pursuit. He would have preferred that they leave immediately, but Aluso refused, saying she must wait for the outcome of the conflict. In the covered rear of the vehicle lay gold, silver, treasures, coin; a guarantee that his wife and child would prosper. That they might be killed he understood. Yet their fates were on the laps of the gods, and the gods had been passing strange. Some forty thousand Spartacani formed up to meet Crassus. Spartacus made no speech to them before the battle, but they cheered him deafeningly as he rode down their ranks on beautiful dappled grey Batiatus. He took his place beneath the standard of his people the leaping enameled fish of a Gaul's fighting helmet turned in the saddle to raise both hands in the air, fists clenched, then slid out of the horse's saddle. His sword was in his right hand, the curved saber of a Thracian gladiator; he closed his eyes, raised it, and brought it down into Batiatus's neck. Blood sprayed and gushed, but the lovely creature made no protest. Like a sacrificial victim it went down on its knees, rolled over, died. There. No need for a speech. To kill his beloved horse told his followers everything. Spartacus did not intend to leave the field alive; he had dispensed with his means of escape. As battles went it was straight, uncomplicated, extremely bloody. Taking their example from Spartacus, most of his men fought until they dropped, some in death, some in utter exhaustion. Spartacus himself killed two centurions before an unknown in the struggling mass cut the hamstrings in one leg. Unable to stand, he fell to his knees, but fought on doggedly until a huge pile of bodies by his side tumbled over and buried him. Fifteen thousand Spartacani survived to flee the field; six thousand went in the direction of Apulia, the rest south toward the Bruttian mountains.
"Over in just six months, and a winter campaign at that," said Crassus to Caesar. "I've lost very few men all considered, and Spartacus is dead. Rome has her eagles and fasces back, and a lot of the plunder will prove impossible to return to its original owners: We'll all do quite well out of it." "There is a difficulty, Marcus Crassus," said Caesar, who had been delegated to inspect the field for men still alive. "Oh?" "Spartacus. He isn't there." "Rubbish!" said Crassus, startled. "I saw him fall!" "So did I. I even memorized exactly where the spot was. I can take you straight to it in fact, come with me now and I will! But he isn't there, Marcus Crassus. He isn't there." "Odd!" The general huffed, pursed his lips, thought for a moment, then shrugged. "Well, what does it really matter? His army's gone, that's the main thing. I can't celebrate a triumph over an enemy classified as slave. The Senate will give me an ovation, but it's not the same. Not the same!" He sighed. "What about his woman, the Thracian witch?" "We haven't found her either, though we did round up quite a few camp followers who had huddled together out of the way. I questioned them about her and found out that her name is Aluso but they swore she had climbed into a red hot, sizzling chariot drawn by fiery snakes and driven off into the sky." "Shades of Medea! I suppose that makes Spartacus Jason!" Crassus turned to walk with Caesar toward the heap of dead that had buried the fallen Spartacus. "I think somehow the pair of them got away. Don't you?" "I'm sure they did," said Caesar. "Well, we'll have to scour the countryside for Spartacani anyway. They might come to light." Caesar made no reply. His own opinion was that they would never come to light. He was clever, the gladiator. Too clever to try to raise another army. Clever enough to become anonymous.
All through the month of May the Roman army tracked down Spartacani in the fastnesses of Lucania and Bruttium, ideal locations for brigandry which made it imperative that every surviving Spartacanus be captured. Caesar had estimated those who escaped southward at about nine or ten thousand, but all he and the other hunting details managed to find were some six thousand six hundred all told. The rest would probably become brigands, contribute to the perils of journeying down the Via Popillia to Rhegium without an armed escort. "I can keep on going," he said to Crassus on the Kalends of June, though the catch will become progressively smaller and harder to snare." "No," said Crassus with decision. "I want my army back in Capua by the next market day. Including the consuls' legions. The curule elections are due next month and I intend to be back in Rome in plenty of time to stand for the consulship." That was no surprise; Caesar in fact did not consider it worthy of comment. Instead he continued on the subject of the fugitive Spartacani. "What about the six thousand or so who fled northeast into Apulia?" "They got as far as the border of Italian Gaul, actually," said Crassus. "Then they ran into Pompeius Magnus and his legions returning from Spain. You know Magnus! He killed the lot." "So that only leaves the prisoners here. What do you want to do with them?" "They'll go with us as far as Capua." The face Crassus turned upon his senior tribune of the soldiers was its usual phlegmatic self, but the eyes held an obdurate coldness. "Rome doesn't need these futile slave wars, Caesar. They're just one more drain on the Treasury. Had we not been lucky, five eagles and five sets of fasces might have been lost forever, a stain on Rome's honor I for one would have found unendurable. In time men like Spartacus might be blown up out of all proportion by some enemy of Rome's. Other men might strive to emulate him, never knowing the grubby truth. You and I know that Spartacus was a product of the legions, far more a Quintus Sertorius than a maltreated slave. Had he not been a product of the legions he could never have gone as far as he did. I do not want him turning into some sort of slave hero. So I will use Spartacus to put a stop to the whole phenomenon of slave uprisings." "It was far more a Samnite than a slave uprising." "True. But the Samnites are a curse Rome will have to live with forever. Whereas slaves must learn their place. I have the means to teach them their place. And I will. After I finish with the remnants of the Spartacani, there will be no more slave uprisings in our Roman world." Used to thinking so quickly and summing men up so well that he had arrived at the answer long before anyone else, Caesar found himself absolutely unable to guess what Crassus was up to. "How will you accomplish that?" he asked. The accountant took over. "It was the fact that there are six thousand six hundred prisoners gave me the idea," Crassus said. The distance between Capua and Rome is one hundred and thirty two miles, each of five thousand feet. That is a total of six hundred and sixty thousand feet. Divided by six thousand six hundred, a distance of one hundred feet. I intend to crucify one Spartacanus every hundred feet between Capua and Rome. And they will remain hanging from their crosses until they rot away to bare bones." Caesar drew a breath. "A terrible sight." "I have one question," said Crassus, his smooth and un lined brow creasing. "Do you think I ought to put all the crosses on one side of the road, or alternate between both sides?" "One side of the road," said Caesar instantly. "Definitely on one side of the road only. That is, provided by road you mean the Via Appia rather than the Via Latina." "Oh yes, it has to be the Via Appia. Straight as an arrow for miles and miles, and not as many hills." "Then one side of the road. The eye will take the sight in better that way." Caesar smiled. "I have some experience when it comes to crucifixion." "I heard about that," said Crassus seriously. "However, I can't give you the job. It's not a fitting one for a tribune of the soldiers. He's an elected magistrate. By rights it belongs to the praefectus fabrum.'' As the praefectus fabrum the man who looked after all the technical and logistic factors involved in army supply was one of Crassus's own freedmen and brilliant at his work, neither Caesar nor Crassus doubted that it would be a smooth operation. Thus it was that at the end of June when Crassus, his legates, his tribunes of the soldiers and his own appointed military tribunes rode up the Via Appia from Capua escorted by a single cohort of troops, the left hand side of the ancient and splendid road was lined with crosses all the way. Every hundred feet another Spartacanus slumped from the ropes which cruelly bound arms at the elbow and legs below the knees. Nor had Crassus been kind. The six thousand six hundred Spartacani died slowly with unbroken limbs, a soughing of moans from Capua to the Capena Gate of Rome. Some people came to sightsee. Some brought a recalcitrant slave to look upon Crassus's handiwork and point out that this was the right of every master, to crucify. But many upon looking turned immediately to go home again, and those who were obliged to travel on the Via Appia anywhere between Capua and Rome were grateful that the crosses adorned only one side of the road. As the distance rendered the sight more bearable, the popular spot for those who lived in Rome to see was from the top of the Servian Walls on either side of the Capena Gate; the view extended for miles, but the faces were blurs. They hung there for eighteen months enduring the slow cycle of decay that took them from living skin and muscle to clacking bones, for Crassus would not permit that they be taken down until the very last day of his consulship. And, thought Caesar in some wonder, surely no other military campaign in the whole history of Rome had been so rounded, so neat, so finite: what had begun with a decimation had ended with a crucifixion.
PART VIII from MAY 71 B.C. until MARCH 69 B.C.
When Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus reached the border at the Rubico River, he didn't halt his army. That part of the Ager Gallicus he owned lay in Italy, and to Italy he would go, no matter what Sulla's laws said. His men were starved to see their homes, and there were still more among them who were his Picentine and Umbrian veterans than there were others. Outside Sena Gallica he put them into a vast camp under orders not to stray without leave from a tribune and proceeded then to Rome with a cohort of foot to escort him down the Via Flaminia. The answer had come to him shortly after he began the long march from Narbo to his new pass across the Alps, and he wondered then at his denseness in not seeing it sooner. Three times he had been given a special commission: once by Sulla, twice by the Senate; twice with propraetorian status, once with proconsular status. He was, he knew, undoubtedly the First Man in Rome. But he also knew that no one who mattered would ever admit the fact. So he would have to prove it to everyone, and the only way he could do that was to bring off some coup so staggering in its audacity and so glaringly unconstitutional that after it was done all men would have to accord him his rightful title of the First Man in Rome. He who was still a knight would force the Senate to make him consul. His opinion of the Senate grew progressively lower, and his liking for that body remained nonexistent. The members of it could be bought as easily as cakes from a bakery, and its inertia was so monumental that it could hardly move out of the way of its own downfall. When he had begun to march his men from Tarentum to Rome in order to force Sulla to give him a triumph, Sulla had backed down! At the time he hadn't seen it that way such was Sulla's effect on people but he now understood that indeed the affair had been a victory for Magnus, not for Sulla. And Sulla had been a far more formidable foe than ever the Senate could be. During his last year in the west he had followed the news about the successes of Spartacus with sheer disbelief; even though he owned the consuls Gellius and Clodianus, still he found it impossible to credit the degree of their incompetence in the field and all they could do to excuse themselves was to harp about the poor quality of their soldiers! It had been on the tip of his pen to write and tell them that he could have generaled an army of eunuchs better, but he had refrained; there was no point in antagonizing men one had paid a long price for. The two further items he had learned about in Narbo only served to reinforce his incredulity. The first item came in letters from Gellius and Clodianus: the Senate had stripped them of the command in the war against Spartacus. The second item came from Philippus: after blackmailing the Senate into procuring a law from the Assembly of the People, Marcus Licinius Crassus had deigned to accept the command, together with eight legions and a good amount of cavalry. Having campaigned with Crassus, Pompey deemed him mediocre in the extreme, and his troops mediocre too. So Philippus's news only served to make him shake his head in a quiet despair. Crassus wouldn't defeat Spartacus either. Just as he left Narbo there arrived the final verification of his impression of the war against Spartacus so poor was the quality of Crassus's troops that he had decimated them! And that, as every commander knew from history and his manuals of military method, was a last measure doomed to failure it utterly destroyed morale. Nothing could stiffen the backbones of men so cowardly that they had earned the punishment of decimation. Yet wasn't it just like big, lumbering Crassus to believe decimation could cure his army's ailments? He began to toy with the thought of arriving back in Italy in time to clean up Spartacus, and out of that like a thunderclap had burst THE IDEA. Of course the Senate would beg him on bended knee to accept yet another special commission the extirpation of the Spartacani. But this time he would insist that he be made consul before he took on the job. If Crassus could blackmail the Conscript Fathers into a command legalized by the People, then what hope did the Conscript Fathers have of withstanding Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus? Proconsul (non pro consule, sed pro consulibus) was just not good enough anymore! Was he to become the Senate's perpetual workhorse perpetually palmed off with an imperium outside of true senatorial power? No! Never again! He didn't at all mind the idea of entering the Senate if he could do so as consul. To the best of his recollection, no one had ever managed to do that. It was a first, a mighty big first and it would demonstrate to the whole world that he was the First Man in Rome. Right across the miles of the Via Domitia he had indulged in one fantasy after another, so happy and affable that Varro (to name only one) couldn't understand what was going through his mind. At times Pompey had been tempted to say something, then would sheer away, resolve to hug this delicious scheme to himself. Varro and the rest would find out soon enough. The mood of joyous anticipation continued to prevail after the new pass had been surveyed and paved and the army descended the Vale of the Salassi into Italian Gaul. Down the Via Aemilia, and still Pompey whistled and chirped blithely. Then at the little town of Forum Popillii, well inside Italy, the awful blow fell. He and his six legions literally ran into a jostling mob of draggled men armed in a nonissue manner which betrayed that they were Spartacani. To round them up and kill them all was easy; what came hard was to learn that Marcus Crassus had annihilated the army of Spartacus in a battle fought less than a month before. The war against Spartacus was over. His chagrin was obvious to every last one of his legates, who all assumed that he had whistled and chirped his way down the Via Aemilia because he had expected to go straight into another campaign. That he had planned to demand to be made consul because of this campaign occurred to no one. For several days he gloomed; even Varro avoided his company. Oh, Pompey was thinking, why didn't I hear this while I was still in Gaul across the Alps? I will have to use the threat of my undischarged army, but I have brought that army inside the borders of Italy contrary to Sulla's constitution. And Crassus still has an army in the field. If I was in Gaul across the Alps I could skulk there until Crassus celebrated his ovation and his troops returned to civilian life. I could have used my tame senators to block the curule elections until I made my move. As it is, I'm in Italy. So it will have to be the threat of my army. Those several gloomy days, however, were succeeded by a new mood; Pompey led his men into their camp at Sena Gallica not whistling and chirping exactly, but not glooming either. Reflection had led him to ask himself a very important question: what were the men of Crassus's army anyway? Answer: the scum of Italy, too craven to stand and fight. Why should the fact that Crassus had won change that? The six thousand fugitives he had encountered at Forum Popillii were pathetic. So perhaps decimation had stiffened the backbones of Crassus's men a bit but could it last? Could it match the splendid courage and perseverance of men who had slogged through the Spanish heat and cold for years without pay, without booty, without decent food, without thanks from the precious Senate? No. The final answer was a loud and definite NO! And as Rome grew closer Pompey's mood gradually soared back toward its earlier happiness. "What exactly are you thinking?" Varro demanded as he and Pompey rode together down the middle of the road. "That I am owed a Public Horse. The Treasury never paid me for my dear dead Snowy." "Isn't that your Public Horse?" asked Varro, pointing at the chestnut gelding Pompey bestrode. "This nag?" Pompey snorted contemptuously. "My Public Horse has to be white." "Actually it's not a nag, Magnus," said the owner of part of the rosea rura, an acknowledged expert on horseflesh. "It's really an excellent animal." "Just because it belonged to Perperna?" "Just because it belongs to itself!" "Well, it's not good enough for me." "Was that really what you were thinking about?" "Yes. What did you think I was thinking about?" "That's my question! What?" "Why don't you hazard a guess?" Varro wrinkled his brow. "I thought I had guessed when we ran across those Spartacani outside Forum Popillii I thought you were planning on another special commission and were very disappointed when you discovered Spartacus was no more. Now I just don't know!" "Well, Varro, wonder on. I think in this I will keep my counsel for the present," said Pompey.
* * *
The cohort Pompey had chosen to escort him to Rome was one made up of men whose homes were in Rome. This kind of common sense was typical of Pompey why haul men off to Rome who would rather be elsewhere? So after he had got them into a small camp on the Via Recta, Pompey allowed them to don civilian garb and go into the city. Afranius, Petreius, Gabinius, Sabinus and the other legates quickly drifted off in their wake, as did Varro, anxious to see his wife and children. That left Pompey alone in command of the Campus Martius or at least his segment of it. To his left as he looked in the direction of the city but closer to it was another small camp. The camp of Marcus Crassus. Also, it would appear, escorted by about one cohort. Like Pompey, Crassus flew a scarlet flag outside his command tent to indicate that the general was in residence. Unfortunate, unfortunate ... Why did there have to be another army inside Italy? Even an army of cowards? It was no part of Pompey's plans actually to fight a civil war; somehow he could never feel comfortable with that idea. It wasn't loyalty or patriotism made him reject the idea, it was more that he did not feel inside himself the emotions men like Sulla felt. To Sulla there had been absolutely no alternative. Rome was the citadel inside which dwelt his heart, his honor, his very source of life. Whereas Pompey's citadel always had been and always would be Picenum. No, he wouldn't fight a civil war. But he had to make it look as if he would. He sat down to draft his letter to the Senate.
To the Senate of Rome: I, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, received a special commission from you six years ago to put down the revolt of Quintus Sertorius in Nearer Spain. As you know, in conjunction with my colleague in the Further province, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius, I succeeded in putting that revolt down, and in bringing about the death of Quintus Sertorius. Also of his various legates, including the vile Marcus Perperna Veiento. I am not the bearer of great spoils. There were no great spoils to be had in a country devastated by a long series of catastrophes. The war in Spain has been one war Rome has had to fight at a loss. Nevertheless I ask for a triumph, secure in the knowledge that I did as you commanded, and that many thousands of Rome's enemies are dead through me. I ask for this triumph to be awarded to me without any delay so that I can put myself up as a candidate for the consulship in the curule elections to be held in Quinctilis.
He had intended to draft the letter so that Varro could look it over and compose something fairer, more diplomatic. But after reading this very short note through several times, Pompey came to the conclusion that it could not be bettered. Hit 'em hard! Philippus arrived just as he was sitting back, satisfied. "Good!" cried Pompey, rising to his feet and shaking Philippus by the hand (a limp and sweaty exercise). "I have a letter for you to read. You can take it to the Senate for me." "Requesting your well deserved triumph?" Philippus asked, sitting down with a sigh; he had walked out to the Via Recta because litters were so slow, but he had forgotten how far it was and how hot a June day could be, even if by the seasons it was still spring. "A little more than that," said Pompey, handing over his wax tablet with a grin. "Something to drink first, my dear fellow, please?" It took Philippus some time to decipher Pompey's dreadful schoolboy writing; he got the gist of the last sentence at exactly the same moment as he took his first big, thirsty gulp of well watered wine, and choked. He was coughing and spluttering so badly that Pompey had to get up and thump him on the back, and it was some time before Philippus could compose himself sufficiently to comment. But he didn't comment. Instead he looked at Pompey as if he had never seen him before. It was a genuinely exploratory gaze that took in the muscular frame still clad in cuirass and kilt, the fair and faintly freckled skin, the enormously attractive face with its dented chin and thatch of bright gold Alexandrian hair. And the eyes wide, candid, eager, such a vivid blue! Pompeius Magnus, the New Alexander. Where did it come from, the gall which must have fueled this demand? The father had been a very strange man, yet the son always contrived to convince people that he was not strange at all. Oh, but the son was far stranger than the father! Few things came as a surprise to Lucius Marcius Philippus. But this was more than a mere surprise. This was the kind of shock could carry a man off! "You're surely not serious?" he asked faintly. "Why shouldn't I be serious?" "Magnus, what you ask cannot be done! It is just not possible! It goes against every law, written and unwritten! No one can be consul without being in the Senate! Even Young Marius and Scipio Aemilianus were not elected consul until after they were in the Senate! You could I suppose argue that Scipio Aemilianus set a precedent by being consul before he was praetor, and Young Marius had never been so much as quaestor. But he was put into the Senate well ahead of the elections! And Sulla has absolutely eliminated all such precedents! Magnus, I beg of you, don't send that letter!" "I want to be consul!" said Pompey, his small mouth growing thin and ringed with white. The gale of laughter it will provoke will waft your letter straight back to you! It cannot be done!" Pompey sat down, swung one shapely leg over the arm of his chair and jiggled its booted foot. "Of course it can be done, Philippus!" he said sweetly. "I have six legions of the best and toughest troops in the world to say it can be done." The breath went out of Philippus with an audible whoof! He began to shake. "You wouldn't!" he cried. "I would, you know." "But Crassus has eight legions sitting in Capua! It would be another civil war!" "Pah!" said Pompey, still jiggling his foot. "Eight legions of cowards. I'd eat them for dinner." "That's what you said about Quintus Sertorius." The foot stopped. Pompey went pale, stiffened. "Don't ever say that to me again, Philippus." "Oh, cacat!" groaned Philippus, wringing his hands. "Magnus, Magnus, I beg you, don't do this! Where did you get the idea that Crassus is commanding an army of cowards? Because of the consuls' legions, the decimation? Well, disabuse yourself! He forged himself a splendid army, as loyal to him as yours is to you. Marcus Crassus is no Gellius or Clodianus! Haven't you heard what he did on the Via Appia between Capua and Rome?'' "No," said Pompey, beginning to look just the slightest bit uncertain. What did he do?'' "There are six thousand six hundred Spartacani hanging on six thousand six hundred crosses along the Via Appia between Capua and Rome that's one cross every hundred feet, Magnus! He decimated the survivors of the consuls' legions to show them what he thought of craven troops, and he crucified the survivors of Spartacus's army to show every slave in Italy what happens to slaves who rebel. Those are not the actions of a man you can dismiss lightly, Magnus! Those are the actions of a man who might deplore civil war it doesn't do his businesses any good! but who, if the Senate so commands him, would take up arms against you. And stand a very good chance of destroying you!'' The uncertainty passed; Pompey's face set mulishly. "I will have my scribe make a fair copy of my letter, Philippus, and you will read it out in the House tomorrow." "You'll ruin yourself!" "I won't." The interview was clearly at an end; Philippus got up. He wasn't out of the tent before Pompey was busy writing again. This time he addressed Marcus Licinius Crassus.
Greetings and a thousand congratulations, my old friend and colleague of the days fighting Carbo. While I was pacifying Spain, I hear that you have been pacifying Italy. They tell me you have welded a fine body of fighting men out of consular cravens and taught all of us how best to deal with rebellious slaves. Once again, a thousand congratulations. If you are planning to be in your quarters this evening, may I pop in for a nice chat?
"Now what does he want?" demanded Crassus of Caesar. "Interesting," said Caesar, handing Pompey's letter back. "I don't think much of his literary style." "He doesn't have a literary style! He's a barbarian," "And do you plan to be in this evening so our friend can pop in for his 'nice chat'? I wonder is that phrase innocent, or is it full of guile?" "Knowing Pompeius, he thinks the phrase is the correct one. And yes, I certainly plan to be in this evening," said Crassus. "With me or without me?" Caesar asked. "With you. Do you know him?" "I met him once a long time ago, but I very much doubt he'll remember me or the occasion." A statement Pompey confirmed when he arrived several hours later. "Have I met you, Gaius Julius? I don't remember." Caesar's laughter was spontaneous, but not mocking. "I'm not surprised, Gnaeus Pompeius. You only had eyes for Mucia." Light dawned. "Oh! You were there in Julia's house when I went to meet my wife! Of course!" "How is she? I've not seen her in years." "I keep her in Picenum," said Pompey, unaware that this way of putting the matter might sound odd. We have a boy and a girl these days and more soon, I hope. I haven't seen her in years either, Gaius Julius." "Caesar. I prefer to be called Caesar." "That's good, because I much prefer being called Magnus." "I imagine you do!" Crassus decided it was time he got a word in. "Sit down, Magnus, please. You look very brown and fit for an old man is it thirty five now?" "Not until the second last day of September." "That's to split hairs. You've packed more into your first thirty five years than most men do into twice that many, so I dread to think what seventy will bring for you. Spain all tidy?" "Beautifully tidy. But," said Pompey magnanimously, "I had some extremely competent help, you know." "Yes, he surprised everyone, old Pius. Never did a thing until he went out to Spain." Crassus got up. "A drop of wine?" Pompey laughed. "Not unless the vintage has improved, you incurable tightpurse!" "It never varies," said Caesar. "Vinegar." "Just as well I don't drink wine, spending a whole campaign with him, isn't it?" asked Caesar, smiling. "You don't drink wine? Ye gods!" At a loss, Pompey turned to Crassus. "Have you applied for your triumph yet?" he asked. "No, I don't qualify for a triumph. The Senate prefers to call the war against Spartacus a slave war, so all I qualify for is an ovation." Crassus cleared his throat, looked a little cast down. "However, I have applied for an ovation. To be held as soon as possible. I want to lay down my imperium in time to stand for the consular elections." "That's right, you were praetor two years ago, so there's no impediment, is there?" Pompey looked cheerful. "I doubt you'll have trouble getting in, after your resounding victory. Ovation one day, consul the next, I daresay." "That's the idea," said Crassus, who hadn't smiled yet. "I have to persuade the Senate to grant me land for at least half of my troops, so being consul will be a help." "That it will," said Pompey cordially, and got up. "Well, I must go. I like to get in a decent walk, keeps me from seizing up getting to be an old man, as you say!" And off he went, leaving Crassus and Caesar looking at each other blankly. "What was all that about?" asked Crassus. "I have a funny feeling," said Caesar thoughtfully, "that we are going to find out."
As a messenger had delivered the scribe copied, neat and tidy version of Pompey's letter early in the afternoon, Philippus did not expect any further word from Pompey until after he had read the letter out in the Senate. But he had only just risen from the dinner couch late that same afternoon when another messenger arrived from Pompey to summon him back to the Campus Martius. For a wild moment Philippus contemplated sending a curt refusal; then he thought of the wonderful annual lump sum Pompey still paid him, sighed, and ordered a litter. No more walking! ''If you've changed your mind about my reading out your letter tomorrow, Magnus, all you had to do was notify me! Why am I here for the second time in one day?" "Oh, don't worry about the letter!" said Pompey impatiently. "Just read the thing out and let them have their laugh. They'll be laughing on the other side of their faces soon enough. No, it's not for that I wanted to see you. I have a job for you that's far more important, and I want you to get started on it at once." Philippus frowned. "What job?" he asked. "I'm going to drive Crassus onto my side," said Pompey. "Oho! And how do you plan to do that?" "I won't be doing it. You and the rest of my lobby will. I want you to swing the Senate away from granting land to Crassus for his troops. But you have to do it now, before he's allowed his ovation, and well before the curule elections. You have to maneuver Crassus into a position which will prevent his offering the use of his army to the Senate if the Senate decides it must squash me with force. I didn't know how to go about it until I went to see Crassus a short time ago. And he let it drop that he's running for consul because he believes as consul he'll be in a better position to demand land for his veterans. You know Crassus! There's not a chance in the world that he'd pay for land himself, but he can't discharge his soldiers without some sort of settlement. He probably won't ask for much after all, it was a short campaign. And that's the tack you're going to adopt that a six months' campaign isn't worth giving away the ager publicus for, especially as the enemy was servile. If the booty was worth his army's while, then it might be content with that. But I know Crassus! Most of the booty won't be entered on the list for the Treasury. He can't help himself he has to try to keep the lot. And get compensation for his men out of the State." "As a matter of fact I heard the booty wasn't great," said Philippus, smiling. "Crassus declared that Spartacus paid out almost everything he had to the pirates when he tried to hire them to take his men to Sicily. But from other sources I've heard this wasn't so, that the sum he paid was half what he had in cash." "That's Crassus!" said Pompey with a reminiscent grin. "I tell you, he can't help himself. How many legions has he got? Eight? Twenty percent to the Treasury, twenty percent to Crassus, twenty percent to his legates and tribunes, ten percent to the cavalry and centurions, and thirty percent to the foot soldiers. That would mean each foot soldier would get about a hundred and eighty five sesterces. Wouldn't pay the rent for long, would it?" "I didn't realize you were so good at arithmetic, Magnus!" "Always better at that than reading and writing." How much will your men get from booty?'' "About the same. But the tally's honest, and they know it is. I always have a few representatives from the ranks present when I tot up booty. Makes them feel better, not so much to know their general's honest as because they think themselves honored. Those of mine who don't already have land will get land. From the State, I hope. But if not from the State, I'll give them some of my land." "That's remarkably generous of you, Magnus." "No, Philippus, it's just forethought. I'm going to need these men and their sons! in the future, so I don't mind being generous now. But when I'm an old man and I've fought my last campaign, I can assure you I won't be willing to stand the damage myself." Pompey looked determined. "My last campaign is going to bring in more money than Rome has seen in a hundred years. I don't know what campaign it's going to be, except that I'll pick a rich one. Parthia's what I'm thinking of. And when I bring the wealth of Parthia back to Rome, I expect Rome to give my veterans land. My career so far has put me badly out of purse well, you know how much I pay out each and every year to you and the rest of my lobby in the Senate!" Philippus hunched himself defensively in his chair. "You'll get your money's worth!" "You're not wrong about that, my friend. And you can start tomorrow," said Pompey cheerfully. "The Senate must refuse to give Crassus land for his troops. I also want the curule elections delayed. And I want my application to be allowed to run for the consulship tabled in the House and kept tabled. Is that clear?" "Perfectly." The hireling got up. "There's only one real difficulty, Magnus. Crassus has a great many senators in debt to him, and I doubt we can turn them onto our side." "We can if we give those men who don't owe Crassus much the money to pay him back. See how many owe him forty thousand sesterces or less. If they're our creatures or might be willing to be our creatures, instruct them to pay Crassus back immediately. If nothing else tells him how serious his situation is, that will," said Pompey. "Even so, I wish you'd let me postpone your letter!" "You will read my letter out tomorrow, Philippus. I don't want anyone deluded about my motives. I want the Senate and Rome to know here and now that I am going to be consul next year." Rome and the Senate knew by the following noon, for at that hour Varro erupted into Pompey's tent, breathless and disheveled. "You're not serious!" Varro gasped, throwing himself into a chair and flapping a hand in front of his flushed face. "I am." "Water, I need water." With a huge effort Varro pulled himself out of the chair and went to the table where Pompey kept his liquid refreshments. He downed a goodly draft, refilled his beaker and went back to his chair. "Magnus, they'll swat you like a moth!" Pompey dismissed this with a contemptuous gesture, staring at Varro eagerly. "How did they take it, Varro? I want to hear every last detail!" Well, Philippus lodged an application to speak with the consul Orestes who has the fasces for June before the meeting, and as it was he who had requested the meeting be convened in the first place, he spoke as soon as the auguries were over. He got up and read out your letter." "Did they laugh?" Startled, Varro lifted his head from his water. "Laugh? Ye gods, no! Everyone sat there absolutely stunned. Then the House began to buzz, softly at first, then louder and louder until the place was in an uproar. The consul Orestes finally managed to establish order, and Catulus asked to speak. I imagine you know pretty much what he had to say." "Out of the question. Unconstitutional. An affront to every legal and ethical precept in the history of Rome." "All that, and a great deal more. By the time he finished he was literally foaming at the mouth." What happened after he finished?'' Philippus gave a really magnificent speech one of the best I've ever heard him give, and he's a great orator. He said you'd earned the consulship, that it was ridiculous to ask a man who had been propraetor twice and proconsul once to crawl into the House under a vow of silence. He said you'd saved Rome from Sertorius, you'd turned Nearer Spain into a model province, you'd even opened up a new pass across the Alps, and that all of those things plus a lot more proved that you had always been Rome's loyalest servant. I can't go into all his flights of fancy ask him for a copy of his speech, he read it out but he made a profound impression, I can tell you that. "And then," Varro went on, looking puzzled, "he changed horses! It was very odd! One moment he was talking about letting you run for consul, the next moment he was talking about the habit we had got into of doling out little pieces of Rome's precious ager publicus to appease the greed of common soldiers, who thanks to Gaius Marius now expected as a matter of course to be rewarded with public land after the smallest and meanest campaign. How this land was being given to these soldiers not in Rome's name, but in the general's name! The practice would have to stop, he said. The practice was creating private armies at the expense of Senate and People, because it gave soldiers the idea that they belonged to their general first, with Rome coming in a bad second." "Oh, good!" purred Pompey. "Did he stop there?" "No, he didn't," said Varro sipping his water. He licked his lips, a nervous reaction; the idea was beginning to occur to him that Pompey was behind all of it. He went on to refer specifically to the campaign against Spartacus, and to Crassus's report to the House. Mincemeat, Magnus! Philippus made mincemeat out of Crassus! How dared Crassus apply for land for the veterans of a six months' campaign! How dared Crassus apply for land to reward soldiers who had had to be decimated before they found the courage to fight! How dared Crassus apply for land to give to men who had only done what any loyal Roman was expected to do put down an enemy threatening the homeland! A war against a foreign power was one thing, he said, but a war against a felon leading an army of slaves conducted on Italian soil was quite another. No man was entitled to ask for rewards when he had literally been defending his home. And Philippus ended by begging the House not to tolerate Crassus's impudence, nor encourage Crassus to think he could buy personal loyalty from his soldiers at the expense of Rome." "Splendid Philippus!" beamed Pompey, leaning forward. "So what happened after that?" "Catulus got up again, but this time he spoke in support of Philippus. How right Philippus was to demand that this practice started by Gaius Marius of giving away State land to soldiers should stop. It must stop, said Catulus! The ager publicus of Rome had to stay in the public domain, it could not be used to bribe common soldiers to be loyal to their commanders." "And did the debate end there?" "No. Cethegus was given leave to speak, and he backed both Philippus and Catulus without reservation, he said. After him, so did Curio, Gellius, Clodianus, and a dozen others. After which the House worked itself into such a state that Orestes decided to terminate the meeting," Varro ended. "Wonderful!" cried Pompey. "This is your doing, Magnus, isn't it?" The wide blue eyes opened even wider. "My doing? Whatever can you mean, Varro?" "You know what I mean," said Varro, tight lipped. "I confess I've only just seen it, but I have seen it! You're using all your senatorial employees to drive a wedge between Crassus and the House! And if you succeed, you will have succeeded in removing Crassus's army from the Senate's command. And if the Senate has no army to command, Rome cannot teach you the lesson you so richly deserve, Gnaeus Pompeius!" Genuinely hurt, Pompey gazed beseechingly at his friend. "Varro, Varro! I deserve to be consul!" "You deserve to be crucified!" Opposition always hardened Pompey; Varro could see the ice forming. And, as always, it unmanned him. So he said, trying to retrieve his lost ground, "I'm sorry, Magnus, I spoke in anger. I retract that. But surely you can see what a terrible thing you are doing! If the Republic is to survive, every man of influence in it must avoid undermining the constitution. What you have asked the Senate to allow you to do goes against every principle in the mos maiorum. Even Scipio Aemilianus didn't go so far and he was directly descended from Africanus and Paullus!" But that only made matters worse. Pompey got up, stiff with outrage. "Oh, go away, Varro! I see what you're saying! If a prince of the blood didn't go so far, how dare a mere mortal from Picenum? I will be consul!"
The effect the doings of that meeting of the Senate had on Marcus Terentius Varro was as nothing compared to the effect it had on Marcus Licinius Crassus. His report came from Caesar, who had restrained Quintus Arrius and the other senatorial legates after the meeting concluded, though Lucius Quinctius took some persuading. "Let me tell him," Caesar begged. "You're all too hot, and you'll make him hot. He has to remain calm." "We never even got a chance to speak our piece!" cried Quinctius, smacking his fist into the palm of his other hand. "That verpa Orestes let everyone talk who was in favor, then closed the meeting before a single one of us could answer!" "I know that," said Caesar patiently, "and rest assured, we'll all get our chance at the next meeting. Orestes did the sensible thing. Everyone was in a rage. And we'll have the floor first next time. Nothing was decided! So let me tell Marcus Crassus, please." And so, albeit reluctantly, the legates had gone to their own homes, leaving Caesar to stride out briskly for the Campus Martius and Crassus's camp. Word of the meeting had flown about like a wind; as he slipped neatly through the crowds of men in the lower Forum Romanum on his way to the Clivus Argentarius, Caesar heard snatches of talk which all revolved around the prospect of yet another civil war. Pompey wanted to be consul the Senate wouldn't have it Crassus wasn't going to get his land it was high time Rome taught these presumptuous generals a much needed lesson what a terrific fellow Pompey was and so on. "... And there you have it," Caesar concluded. Crassus had listened expressionless to the crisp and succinct summary of events Caesar presented to him, and now that the tale was over he maintained that expressionless mask. Nor did he say anything for some time, just gazed out of the open aperture in his tent wall at the quiet beauty of the Campus Martius. Finally he gestured toward the scene outside and said without turning to face Caesar, "Lovely, isn't it? You'd never think a cesspool like Rome was less than a mile down the Via Lata, would you?" "Yes, it is lovely," said Caesar sincerely. "And what do you think about the not so lovely events in the Senate this morning?" "I think," said Caesar quietly, "that Pompeius has got you by the balls." That provoked a smile, followed by a silent laugh. You are absolutely correct, Caesar." Crassus pointed in the direction of his desk, where piles of filled moneybags lay all over its surface. "Do you know what those are?" "Money, certainly. I can't guess what else." "They represent every small debt a senator owed me," said Crassus. "Fifty repayments altogether." "And fifty fewer votes in the House." "Exactly." Crassus heaved his chair around effortlessly and put his feet up among the bags atop his desk, leaned back with a sigh. "As you say, Caesar, Pompeius has got me by the balls." "I'm glad you're taking it calmly." "What's the point in ranting and raving? That wouldn't help. Couldn't change a thing. More importantly, is there anything that will change the situation?" "Not from a testicular aspect, for sure. But you can still work within the parameters Pompeius has set it's possible to move about, even with someone's hairy paw wrapped around your poor old balls," said Caesar with a grin. Crassus answered it. Quite so. Who would have thought Pompeius had that kind of brilliance?'' "Oh, he's brilliant. In an untutored way. But it was not a politic ploy, Crassus. He hit you with the stunning hammer first and then stated his terms. If he owned any political sense, he would have come to you first and told you what he intended to do. Then it might have been arranged in peace and quiet, without all of Rome stirred into a fever pitch at the prospect of another civil war. The trouble with Pompeius is that he has no idea how other people think, or how they're going to react. Unless, that is, their thoughts and reactions are the same as his own." "You are probably right, but I think it has more to do with Pompeius's self doubt. If he absolutely believed he could force the Senate to let him be consul, he would have come to me before he moved. But I'm less important to him than the Senate, Caesar. It's the Senate he has to sway. I'm just his tool. So what can it matter to him if he stuns me first? He's got me by the balls. If I want land for my veterans, I have to inform the Senate that it can't rely on me or my soldiers to oppose Pompeius." Crassus shifted his booted feet; the bags of money chinked. "What do you intend to do?" "I intend," said Crassus, swinging his feet off the desk and standing up, "sending you to see Pompeius right now. I don't need to tell you what to say. Negotiate, Caesar." Off went Caesar to negotiate. One of the few certainties, he thought wryly, was that he would find each general at home; until triumph or ovation was held, no general could cross the pomerium into the city, for to do so was to shed imperium automatically, thereby preventing triumph or ovation. So while legates and tribunes and soldiers could come and go as they pleased, the general himself was obliged to remain on the Campus Martius. Sure enough, Pompey was at home if a tent could be called a home. His senior legates Afranius and Petreius were with him, looked at Caesar searchingly; they had heard a little about him pirates and the like and knew that he had won the Civic Crown at twenty years of age. All things which made viri militares like Afranius and Petreius respect a man mightily; and yet this dazzling fellow, immaculate enough to be apostrophized a dandy, didn't look the type. Togate rather than clad in military gear, nails trimmed and buffed, senatorial shoes without a scuff or a smear of dust, hair perfectly arranged, he surely could not have walked from Crassus's quarters to Pompey's through wind and sun! "I remember you said you didn't drink wine. Can I offer you water?" asked Pompey, gesturing in the direction of a chair. "Thank you, I require nothing except a private conversation," said Caesar, seating himself. "I'll see you later," said Pompey to his legates. He waited until he saw the two disappointed men well out of hearing down the path toward the Via Recta before he directed his attention at Caesar. "Well?" he asked in his abrupt manner. "I come from Marcus Crassus." "I expected to see Crassus himself." "You're better off dealing with me." "Angry, is he?" Caesar's brows lifted. "Crassus? Angry? Not at all!" "Then why can't he come to see me himself?" And set all of Rome chattering even harder than it already is?" asked Caesar. "If you and Marcus Crassus are to do business, Gnaeus Pompeius, better that you do so through men like me, who are the soul of discretion and loyal to our superiors." "So you're Crassus's man, eh?" "In this matter, yes. In general I am my own man." "How old are you?" asked Pompey bluntly. "Twenty nine in Quinctilis." "Crassus would call that splitting hairs. You'll be in the Senate soon, then." "I'm in the Senate now. Have been for almost nine years." "Why?" "I won a Civic Crown at Mitylene. Sulla's constitution says that military heroes enter the Senate," said this dandy. "Everyone always refers to Rome's constitution as Sulla's constitution," said Pompey, deliberately ignoring unwelcome information like a Civic Crown. He had never won a major crown himself, and it hurt. "I'm not sure I'm grateful to Sulla!" "You ought to be. You owe him your various special commissions," said Caesar, "but after this little episode, I very much doubt that the Senate will ever be willing to award another special commission to a knight." Pompey stared. "What do you mean?" "Just what I say. You can't force the Senate into letting you become consul and expect the Senate to forgive you, Gnaeus Pompeius. Nor can you expect to control the Senate forever. Philippus is an old man. So is Cethegus. And when they go, who will you use in their stead? The seniors in the Senate will all be men of Catulus's persuasion the Caecilii Metelli, the Cornelii, the Licinii, the Claudii. So a man wanting a special commission will have to go to the People, and by the People I do not mean patricians and plebeians combined. I mean the Plebs. Rome used to work almost exclusively through the Plebeian Assembly. I predict that in the future, that is how she will work again. Tribunes of the plebs are so enormously useful but only if they have their legislating powers." Caesar coughed. "It's also cheaper to buy tribunes of the plebs than it is the high fliers like Philippus and Cethegus." All of that sank in; impassively Caesar watched it vanish thirstily below Pompey's surface. He didn't care for the fellow, but wasn't sure exactly why. Having had much childhood exposure to Gauls, it was not the Gaul in him Caesar objected to. So what was it? While Pompey sat there digesting what he had said, Caesar thought about the problem, and came to the conclusion that it was simply the man he didn't care for, not what he represented. The conceit, the almost childish concentration on self, the lacunae in a mind which obviously held no respect for the Law. "What does Crassus have to say to me?" demanded Pompey. "He'd like to negotiate a settlement, Gnaeus Pompeius." "Involving what?" "Wouldn't it be better if you put forward your requirements first, Gnaeus Pompeius?" "I do wish you'd stop calling me that! I hate it! I am Magnus to the world!" This is a formal negotiation, Gnaeus Pompeius. Custom and tradition demand that I address you by praenomen and nomen. Are you not willing to put forward your requirements first?" "Oh, yes, yes!" snapped Pompey, not sure exactly why he could feel his temper fraying, except that it had to do with this smooth, polished fellow Crassus had sent as his representative. Everything Caesar had said so far made eminent good sense, but that only made the situation more maddening. He, Magnus, was supposed to be calling the tune, but this interview wasn't coming up to expectation. Caesar behaved as if it were he had the power, he the upper hand. The man was prettier than dead Memmius and craftier than Philippus and Cethegus combined and yet he had won the second highest military decoration Rome could award and from an incorruptible like Lucullus, at that. So he had to be very brave, a very good soldier. Had Pompey also known the stories about the pirates, the will of King Nicomedes and the battle on the Maeander, he might have decided to conduct this interview along different lines; Afranius and Petreius had heard some of it, but typical Pompey! he had heard nothing. Therefore the interview proceeded with more of the real Pompey on display than would otherwise have been the case. "Your requirements?" Caesar was prompting. "Are purely to persuade the Senate to pass a resolution that will let me run for consul." "Without membership in the Senate?" "Without membership in the Senate." "What if you do persuade the Senate to allow you to run for consul, and then lose at the elections?'' Pompey laughed, genuinely amused. "I couldn't lose if I tried!" he said. "I hear the competition is going to be fierce. Marcus Minucius Thermus, Sextus Peducaeus, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi, Marcus Fannius, Lucius Manlius as well as the two leading contenders at this stage, Metellus Little Goat and Marcus Crassus," said Caesar, looking amused. None of the names meant much to Pompey except the last one; he sat up straight. "You mean he still intends to run?" "If, as seems likely, Gnaeus Pompeius, you are going to ask him to withhold the use of his army from the Senate, then he must run for consul and must be elected," said Caesar gently. "If he isn't consul next year, he'll be prosecuted for treason before January has run its course. As consul, he cannot be made to answer for any action until his consulship and any proconsulship which follows are over and he is once more a privatus. So what he has to do is to succeed in being elected consul, and then succeed in restoring full powers to the tribunate of the plebs. After that he will have to persuade one tribune of the plebs to pass a law validating his action in withholding his army from the Senate's use and persuade the other nine not to veto. Then when he does become a privatus again, he can't be prosecuted for the treason you are asking him to commit." A whole gamut of expressions chased each other across Pompey's face puzzlement, enlightenment, bewilderment, total confusion, and finally fear. "What are you trying to say?'' he cried, out of his depth and beginning to feel an awful sense of suffocation. "I am saying and very clearly, I think! that if either of you is to avoid prosecution for treason due to the games you intend to play with the Senate and two armies which actually belong to Rome, both of you will have to be consul next year, and both of you will have to work very hard to restore the tribunate of the plebs to its old form," said Caesar sternly. The only way either of you can escape the consequences is by procuring a plebiscite from the Plebeian Assembly absolving both of you from any guilt in the matter of armies and senatorial manipulation. Unless, that is, Gnaeus Pompeius, you have not brought your own army across the Rubico into Italy?" Pompey shuddered. "I didn't think!" he cried. "Most of the Senate," Caesar said in conversational tones, "is composed of sheep. No one is unaware of that fact. But it does blind some people to another fact that the Senate has a certain number of wolves in its fold. I do not number Philippus among the senatorial wolves. Nor Cethegus, for that matter. But Metellus Little Goat should rightly be cognominated Big Wolf, and Catulus has fangs for tearing, not molars for ruminating. So does Hortensius, who might not be consul yet, but whose clout is colossal and whose knowledge of the law is formidable. Then we have my youngest and brightest uncle, Lucius Cotta. You might say even I am a senatorial wolf! Any one of the men I've named but more likely all of them combined is quite capable of prosecuting you and Marcus Crassus for treason. And you will have to stand your trial in a court juried by senators. Having thumbed your nose at a great many senators. Marcus Crassus might get off, but you won't, Gnaeus Pompeius. I'm sure you have a huge following in the Senate, but can you hold it together after you've dangled the threat of civil war in its face and forced it to accede to your wishes? You may hold your faction together while you're consul and then proconsul, but not once you're a privatus again. Not unless you keep your army under its eagles for the rest of your life and that, since the Treasury won't pay for it, would not be possible, even for a man with your resources." So many ramifications! The awful sense of suffocation was increasing; for a moment Pompey felt himself back on the field at Lauro, helpless to prevent Quintus Sertorius from running rings around him. Then he rallied, looked tough and absolutely determined. "How much of what you've said does Marcus Crassus himself understand?" "Enough," said Caesar tranquilly. "He's been in the Senate a long time, and in Rome even longer. He's in and out of the law courts, he knows the constitution backward. It's all there in the constitution! Sulla's and Rome's." "So what you're saying is that I have to back down." Pompey drew a breath. "Well, I won't! I want to be consul! I deserve to be consul, and I will be consul!" "It can be arranged. But only in the way I've outlined," Caesar maintained steadily. "Both you and Marcus Crassus in the curule chairs, restoration of the tribunate of the plebs and an exculpatory plebiscite, followed by another plebiscite to give land to the men of both armies." He shrugged lightly. "After all, Gnaeus Pompeius, you have to have a colleague in the consulship! You can't be consul without a colleague. So why not a colleague laboring under the same disadvantages and suffering the same risks? Imagine if Metellus Little Goat were to be voted in as your colleague! His teeth would be fixed in the back of your neck from the first day. And he would marshal every reserve he could to make sure you didn't succeed in your attempts to restore the tribunate of the plebs. Two consuls in a very close collaboration are extremely difficult for the Senate to resist. Especially if they have ten united, rejuvenated tribunes of the plebs to back them up." "I see what you're saying," said Pompey slowly. "Yes, it would be a great advantage to have an amenable colleague. All right. I will be consul with Marcus Crassus." "Provided," said Caesar pleasantly, "that you don't forget the second plebiscite! Marcus Crassus must get that land." "No problem! I can get land for my men too, as you say." "Then the first step has been taken." Until this shattering discussion with Caesar, Pompey had assumed that Philippus would mastermind his candidacy for the consulship, would do whatever was necessary; but now Pompey wondered. Had Philippus seen all the consequences? Why hadn't he said anything about prosecutions for treason and the necessity to restore the tribunate of the plebs? Was Philippus perhaps a little tired of being a paid employee? Or was he past his prime? "I'm a dunce about politics," said Pompey with what he tried to make engaging frankness. "The trouble is, politics don't fascinate me. I'm far more interested in command, and I was thinking of the consulship as a sort of huge civilian command. You've made me see it differently. And you make sense, Caesar. So tell me this how do I go about it? Should I just keep on lodging letters through Philippus?'' "No, you've done that, you've thrown down your challenge," said Caesar, apparently not averse to acting as Pompey's political adviser. "I presume you've given Philippus orders to delay the curule elections, so I won't go into that. The Senate's next move will be aimed at trying to get the upper hand. It will give you and Marcus Crassus firm dates you for your triumph, Marcus Crassus for his ovation. And of course the senatorial decree will instruct each of you to disband your army the moment your celebrations are over. That's quite normal." He sat there, thought Pompey, not a scrap differently from the way he had the moment he arrived; he displayed no thirst, no discomfort in that vast toga from the heat of the day, no sign of a sore behind from the hard chair or a sore neck from looking at Pompey slightly to one side. And the words which gave voice to the thoughts were as well chosen as the thoughts were well organized. Yes, Caesar definitely bore watching. Caesar continued. "The first move will have to come from you. When you get the date for your triumph, you must throw up your hands in horror and explain that you've just remembered you can't triumph until Metellus Pius comes home from Further Spain, because you and he agreed to share one triumph between the two of you no spoils worth speaking of, and so forth. But the moment you give this excuse for not disbanding your army, Marcus Crassus will throw his hands up in horror and protest that he cannot disband his army if that leaves only one fully mobilized army inside Italy yours. You can keep this farce going until the end of the year. It won't take the Senate many moons to realize that neither of you has any intention of disbanding his army, but that both of you are to some extent legalizing your positions. Provided neither of you makes a militarily aggressive move in Rome's direction, you both look fairly good." "I like it!" said Pompey, beaming. "I'm so glad. It's less strain to preach to the converted. Now where was I?" Caesar frowned, pretended to think. "Oh, yes! Once the Senate understands that neither army is going to be disbanded, it will issue the appropriate consulta to allow both of you to stand for the consulship in absentia for of course neither of you can enter Rome to lodge your candidacies in person to the election officer. Only the lots will show whether the election officer will be Orestes or Lentulus Sura, but I can't see much difference between them." "How do I get around the fact that I'm not in the Senate?" asked Pompey. "You don't. That's the Senate's problem. It will be solved with a senatus consultum to the Assembly of the People allowing a knight to seek election as consul. I imagine the People will pass it happily all those knights will consider it a tremendous win!" And Marcus Crassus and I can disband our armies when we've won election," said Pompey, satisfied. "Oh, no," said Caesar, shaking his head gently. "You keep your armies under their eagles until the New Year. Therefore you won't celebrate triumph and ovation until the latter half of December. Let Marcus Crassus ovate first. Then you can triumph on the last day of December." "It all makes perfect sense," said Pompey, and frowned. "Why didn't Philippus explain things properly?" "I haven't any idea," said Caesar, looking innocent. "I think I do," said Pompey grimly. Caesar rose, pausing to arrange the folds of his toga just so, utterly absorbed in the task. Finished, he walked with his graceful, straight shouldered gait to the flap of the tent. In the entrance he paused, looked back, smiled. "A tent is a most impermanent structure, Gnaeus Pompeius. It looks good for the general awaiting his triumph to set up an impermanent structure. But I don't think it's quite the impression you should be striving to make from now on. May I suggest that you hire an expensive villa on the Pincian Hill for the rest of the year? Bring your wife down from Picenum? Entertain? Breed a few pretty fish? I will make sure Marcus Crassus does the same. You'll both look as if you're prepared to live on the Campus Martius for the rest of your lives if necessary." Then he was gone, leaving Pompey collecting composure and thoughts. The military holiday was over; he would have to sit down with Varro and read law. Caesar seemed to know every nuance, yet he was six years younger. If the Senate had its share of wolves, was Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus going to be a sheep? Never! By the time New Year's Day came around, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus would know his law and his Senate!
"Ye gods, Caesar, you're clever!" said Crassus feebly when Caesar had ended his tale of Pompey. "I didn't think of half that! I don't say I wouldn't have worked it all out eventually, but you must have done it between my tent and his. A villa on the Pincian, indeed! I have a perfectly good house on the Palatine I've just spent a fortune redecorating why spend money on a villa on the Pincian? I'm comfortable in a tent." "What an incurable cheeseparer you are, Marcus Crassus!" said Caesar, laughing. "You'll rent a villa on the Pincian at least as expensive as Pompeius's and move Tertulla and the boys into it at once. You can afford it. Look on it as a necessary investment. It is! You and Pompeius are going to have to seem like bitter opponents for the next almost six months." And what are you going to do?'' asked Crassus. "I'm going to find myself a tribune of the plebs. Preferably a Picentine one. I don't know why, but men from Picenum are attracted to the tribunate of the plebs, and make very good ones. It shouldn't be difficult. There are probably half a dozen members of this year's college who hail from Picenum." "Why a Picentine?" "For one thing, he'll be inclined to favor Pompeius. They're a clannish lot, the Picentines. For another, he'll be a fire eater. They're born breathing fire in Picenum!" "Take care you don't end up with burned hands," said Crassus, already thinking about which of his freedmen would drive the hardest bargain with the agents who rented villas on the Pincian Hill. What a pity he'd never thought of investing in real estate there! An ideal location. All those foreign kings and queens looking for Roman palaces no, he wouldn't rent! He'd buy! Rent was a disgraceful waste; a man never saw a sestertius's return.
2
In November the Senate gave in. Marcus Licinius Crassus was informed that he would be allowed to stand in absentia for the consulship. Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus was informed that the Senate had sent a decree to the Assembly of the People asking that body to waive the usual requirements membership in the Senate, the quaestorship and praetorship and legislate to allow him to stand for the consulship. As the Assembly of the People had passed the necessary law, the Senate was pleased to inform Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus that he would be allowed to stand in absentia for the consulship, et cetera, et cetera. When a candidate stood for office in absentia, canvassing was difficult. He couldn't cross the pomerium into the city to meet the voters, chat to everyone in the Forum, pose modestly nearby when some tribune of the plebs called a contio of the Plebeian Assembly to discuss the merits of this favored candidate and lambaste his rivals. Because in absentia required special permission from the House, it was rarely encountered, but never before had two candidates for the consulship both stood in absentia. However, as things turned out the usual disadvantages mattered not a bit. Debate in the Senate even under the threat of those two undischarged armies had been as feverishly hot as it had been protracted; when the House gave in at last, every other candidate for the consulship had withdrawn from the contest as a protest against the blatant illegality of Pompey's candidature. If there were no other candidates, Pompey and Crassus would look what they were: dictators in disguise. Many and varied were the threats called down upon Pompey's head and Crassus's head, mostly in the form of prosecution for treason the moment imperium was lost; so when the tribune of the plebs Marcus Lollius Palicanus (a man from Picenum) called a special meeting of the Plebeian Assembly in the Circus Flaminius on the Campus Martius, every senator who had turned his back on Pompey and Crassus sat up with a shock of realization. They were going to wriggle out of treason charges by bringing back the full powers of the tribunate of the plebs and having ten grateful tribunes of the plebs legislate them immunity from the consequences of their actions! Many in Rome wanted to see the restoration, most people because the tribunate of the plebs was a hallowed institution in proper harmony with the mos maiorum, and not a few people because they missed the vigor and buzz of the old days in the lower Forum Romanum when some militant demagogue fired up the Plebs until fists swung and hired ex gladiators waded into the fray. So Lollius Palicanus's meeting, widely advertised as being to discuss the restoration of the tribunate of the plebs, was bound to attract crowds. But when the news got round that the consular candidates Pompey and Crassus were going to speak in support of Palicanus, enthusiasm reached heights unknown since Sulla had turned the Plebeian Assembly into a rather attenuated men's club. Used for the less well patronized games, the Circus Flaminius held a mere fifty thousand people; but on the day of Palicanus's meeting every bleacher was full. Resigned to the fact that no one save those lucky enough to be within a couple of hundred feet would hear a word, most of those who had streamed out along the bank of the Tiber had only come so that they could tell their grandchildren that they had been there on the day two consular candidates who were also military heroes had promised to restore the tribunate of the plebs. Because they would do it! They would! Palicanus opened the meeting with a rousing speech aimed at procuring the most possible votes for Pompey and Crassus at the curule elections; those close enough to hear were those high enough in the classes to have a worthwhile vote. All Palicanus's nine colleagues were present, and all spoke in support of Pompey and Crassus. Then Crassus appeared to great applause and spoke to great applause. A nice series of preliminary entertainments before the main performance. And here he came, Pompey the Great! Clad in glittering golden armor as bright as the sun, looking absolutely gorgeous. He did not have to be an orator; for all the crowd cared, he might have recited gibberish. The crowd had come to see Pompey the Great, and went home deliriously satisfied. No surprise then that when the curule elections took place on the day before the Nones of December, Pompey was voted in as senior consul and Crassus as his junior. Rome was going to have a consul who had never been a member of the Senate and Rome had preferred him to his more elderly and orthodox colleague.
"So Rome has her first consul who was never a senator," said Caesar to Crassus after the election gathering had dispersed. He was sitting with Crassus on the loggia of the Pincian villa where once King Jugurtha of Numidia had sat plotting; Crassus had bought the property after he saw the long list of illustrious foreign names who had rented it over the years. Both of them were looking at the public slaves clearing up the enclosures, bridges and voting platforms from the Saepta. "For no other reason than that he wanted to be consul," said Crassus, aping the peevish note Pompey put into his voice whenever he was thwarted. "He's a big baby!" "In some ways, yes." Caesar turned his head to glance at Crassus's face, which bore its usual placid expression. "It's you who'll have to do the governing. He doesn't know how." "Oh, don't I know! Though he must have absorbed something by now from Varro's handy little instant manual on senatorial and consular conduct," said Crassus, and grunted. "I ask you! The senior consul having to peruse a manual of behavior! I have these wonderful visions of what Cato the Censor would say." "He's asked me to draft the law returning all its powers to the tribunate of the plebs, did he tell you?'' "When does he ever tell me anything?" "I declined." "Why?" "First of all, because he assumed he'd be senior consul." "He knew he'd be senior consul!" "And secondly, you're perfectly capable of drafting any law the pair of you might want to promulgate you were urban praetor!" Crassus shook his huge head, put his hand on Caesar's arm. "Do it, Caesar. It will keep him happy! Like all spoiled big babies, he has a gift for using the right people to achieve his ends. If you decline because you don't care to be used, that's all right by me. But if you'd like the challenge and you think it would add to your legislative experience, then do it. No one is going to know he'll make sure of that." "How right you are!" laughed Caesar, then sobered. "I would like to do it, as a matter of fact. We haven't had decent tribunes of the plebs since I was a boy Sulpicius was the last. And I can foresee a time when all of us might need tribunician laws. It has been very interesting for a patrician to associate with the tribunes of the plebs the way I have been lately. Palicanus has a replacement ready for me, by the way." "Who?" "A Plautius. Not one of the old family Silvanus. This one is from Picenum and seems to go back to a freedman. A good fellow. He's prepared to do whatever I need done through the newly revitalized Plebeian Assembly." "The tribunician elections haven't been held yet. Plautius may not get in," said Crassus. "He'll get in," said Caesar confidently. "He can't lose he's Pompeius's man." "And isn't that an indictment of our times?" "Pompeius is lucky having you for a colleague, Marcus Crassus. I keep seeing Metellus Little Goat there instead. A disaster! But I am sorry that you haven't the distinction of being senior consul." Crassus smiled, it seemed without rancor. "Don't worry, Caesar. I am reconciled." He sighed. "However, it would be nice to see Rome mourn my passing more than she does Pompeius's passing when we leave office." "Well," said Caesar, rising, "it's time I went home. I have devoted little time to the women of my family since I came back to Rome, and they'll be dying to hear all the election news."
But one glance at his reception room caused Caesar to rue his decision to go home; it appeared to be full of women! A count of heads reduced full to six his mother, his wife, his sister Ju Ju, his Aunt Julia, Pompey's wife, and another woman closer inspection placed as his cousin Julia called Julia Antonia because she was married to Marcus Antonius, the pirate eradicator. Everyone's attention was focused on her, not surprising: she was perched on the edge of a chair with her legs stretched out rigidly before her, and she was bawling. Before Caesar could move any further, someone gave him a tremendous buffet in the small of the back, and he whipped around to see a big, unmistakably Antonian child standing there grinning. Not for long! Caesar's hand went out to grasp the boy painfully by his nose, dragged him forward. Howls quite as loud as those his mother was producing erupted from his gaping mouth, but he wasn't about to curl into a helpless ball; he lashed out with one big foot at Caesar's shins, doubled his hands into fists and swung with both of them. At the same time two other, smaller boys dived on Caesar too, pummeling his sides and chest, though the immense folds of toga prevented this triple assault from inflicting any real damage. Then too quickly for anyone to see how it was done, all three boys were rendered hors de combat. The two smaller ones Caesar dealt with by banging their heads together with an audible crack and throwing them heavily against the wall; the biggest boy got a wallop on the side of the face that made his eyes water, and was marched to join his brothers in a jerking progress punctuated by resounding kicks on his backside. The bawling mother had ceased her plaints when all this had begun, and now leaped from her chair to descend upon the tormentor of her darling precious sons. Sit down, woman!'' roared Caesar in a huge voice. She tottered back to her chair and collapsed, bawling. He turned back to where the three boys half lay, half sat against the wall, blubbering as lustily as their mother. "If any one of you moves, he'll wish he'd never been born. This is my house, not the Pincian menagerie, and while you're guests in it you'll behave like civilized Romans, not Tingitanian apes. Is that quite clear?" Holding the crumpled disorder of dirty toga around him, he walked through the midst of the women to the door of his study. "I am going to rectify the damage," he said in the deceptively quiet tones his mother and wife recognized as temper reined in by an iron hold, "and when I return, I expect to see a beautiful peace descended. Shut that wretched woman up if you have to gag her, and give her sons to Burgundus. Tell Burgundus he has my full permission to strangle them if necessary." Caesar was not gone long, but when he returned it was to find the boys vanished and the six women sitting bolt upright in utter silence. Six pairs of enormous eyes followed him as he went to sit between his mother and his wife. "Well, Mater, what's the trouble?" he asked pleasantly. "Marcus Antonius is dead," Aurelia explained, "by his own hand, in Crete. You know that he was defeated by the pirates twice on the water and once on the land, and lost all his ships and men. But you may not know that the pirate strategoi Panares and Lasthenes literally forced him to sign a treaty between Rome and the Cretan people. The treaty has just arrived in Rome, accompanied by poor Marcus Antonius's ashes. Though the Senate hasn't had time to meet about it, they are already saying around the city that Marcus Antonius has disgraced his name forever people are even beginning to refer to him as Marcus Antonius Creticus! But they don't mean Crete, they mean Man of Chalk." Caesar sighed, his face betraying exasperation rather than sorrow. "He wasn't the right man for that job," he said, not willing to spare the feelings of the widow, a vastly silly woman. "I saw it when I was his tribune in Gytheum. However, I confess I didn't see precisely what the end would be. But there were plenty of signs." He looked at Julia Antonia. "I'm sorry for you, lady, but I fail to see what I can do for you." Julia Antonia came to see if you would organize Marcus Antonius's funeral rites," said Aurelia. "But she has a brother. Why can't Lucius Caesar do it?" asked Caesar blankly. "Lucius Caesar is in the east with the army of Marcus Cotta, and your cousin Sextus Caesar refuses to have anything to do with it," said Aunt Julia. "In the absence of Gaius Antonius Hybrida, we are the closest family Julia Antonia has in Rome." "In that case I will organize the obsequies. It would be wise, however, to make it a very quiet funeral." Julia Antonia rose to go, shedding handkerchiefs, brooches, pins, combs in what seemed an endless cascade; she seemed now to hold no umbrage against Caesar for his summary treatment of her sons or for his dispassionate appraisal of her late husband's ability. Evidently she liked being roared at and told to behave, reflected Caesar as he escorted her toward the door. No doubt the late Marcus Antonius had obliged her! A pity he hadn't also disciplined his children, as the mother was incapable of it. Her boys were fetched from Burgundus's quarters, where they had undergone a salutary experience; the sons of Cardixa and Burgundus had dwarfed them completely. Like their mother they seemed not to have taken permanent offense. All three eyed Caesar warily. "There's no need to be afraid of me unless you've stepped over the mark of common decent behavior," said Caesar cheerfully, his eyes twinkling. If I catch you doing that watch out!" "You're very tall, but you don't look all that strong to me," said the oldest boy, who was the handsomest of the three, though his eyes were too close together for Caesar's taste. However, they stared at him straightly enough, and their expression did not lack courage or intelligence. "One day you'll encounter a tiny little fellow who slaps you flat on your back before you can move a finger," said Caesar. "Now go home and look after your mother. And do your homework instead of prowling through the Subura getting up to mischief and stealing from people who've done you no harm. Homework will benefit you more in the long run." Mark Antony blinked. "How do you know about that?" "I know everything," said Caesar, shutting the door on them. He returned to the rest of the women and sat down again. "The invasion of the Germans," he said, smiling. "What a frightful tribe of little boys! Does no one supervise them?" "No one," said Aurelia. She heaved a sigh of pure pleasure. "Oh, I did enjoy watching you dispose of them! My hand had been itching to administer a good spanking ever since they arrived." Caesar's eyes were resting on Mucia Tertia, who looked, he thought, marvelously attractive; marriage to Pompey obviously agreed with her. Mentally he added her name to his list of future conquests Pompey had more than asked for it! But not yet. Let the abominable Kid Butcher first climb even higher. Caesar had no doubt he could succeed with Mucia Tertia; he had caught her staring at him several times. No, not yet. She needed more time to ripen on Pompey's vine before he snipped her off. At the moment he had enough on his plate dealing with Metella Little Goat, who was the wife of Gaius Verres. Now ploughing her furrow was one exercise in horticulture he found enormously gratifying! His sweet little wife was watching him, so he removed his eyes from Mucia Tertia and focused them on her instead. When he dropped one lid in a wink Cinnilla had to suppress a giggle, and demonstrated that she had inherited one characteristic from her father; she blushed scarlet. A dear lady. Never jealous, though of course she heard the rumors and probably believed them. After all these years she must surely know her Caesar! But she was too shaped by Aurelia ever to bring up the subject of his philanderings, and naturally he did not. They had nothing to do with her. With his mother he was not so circumspect it had been her idea in the first place to seduce the wives of his peers. Nor was he above asking her advice from time to time, when some woman proved difficult. Women were a mystery he suspected would always remain a mystery, and Aurelia's opinions were worth hearing. Now that she mixed with her peers from Palatine and Carinae she heard all the gossip and faithfully reported it to him free of embellishments. What he liked of course was to drive his women out of their minds for love of him before dropping them; it rendered them useless to their cuckolded husbands ever after. "I suppose all of you gathered to console Julia Antonia," he said, wondering if his mother would have the gall to offer him sweet watered wine and little cakes. "She arrived at my house trailing trinkets and those awful boys," said Aunt Julia, "and I knew I couldn't cope with all four of them. So I brought them here." "And you were visiting Aunt Julia?" asked Caesar of Mucia Tertia, his smile devastating. She drew a breath, caught it, coughed. I visit Julia a lot, Gaius Julius. The Quirinal is very close to the Pincian." "Yes, of course." He gave much the same smile to Aunt Julia, who was by no means impervious to it, but naturally saw it in a different way. "I suspect I'll see a great deal more of Julia Antonia in the future, alas," said Aunt Julia, sighing. "I wish I had your technique with her sons!" "Her visits won't go on for long, Aunt Julia, and I'll make it my business to have a little word with the boys, don't worry. Julia Antonia will be married again in no time." "No one would have her!" said Aurelia, snorting. "There are always men peculiarly susceptible to the charms of utterly helpless women," said Caesar. "Unfortunately she's a bad picker. So whoever she marries will prove no more satisfactory a husband than did Marcus Antonius the Man of Chalk."" "In that, my son, you are definitely right." He turned his attention to his sister Ju Ju, who had said not one word so far; she had always been the silent member of the family, despite owning a lively disposition. "I used to accuse Lia of being a bad picker," he said, "but I didn't give you a chance to show me what sort of picker you were, did I?" She gave him back his own smile. "I am very well content with the husband you picked for me, Caesar. However, I'm quite prepared to admit that the young men I used to fancy before I married have all turned out rather disappointing.'' "Then you'd better let Atius and me pick your daughter's husband when the time comes. Atia is going to be very beautiful. And intelligent, which means she won't appeal to everyone." "Isn't that a pity?" asked Ju Ju. "That she's intelligent, or that men don't appreciate it?" "The latter." "I like intelligent women," said Caesar, "but they're few and far between. Don't worry, we'll find Atia someone who does appreciate her qualities." Aunt Julia rose. "It will be dark soon, Caesar I know you prefer to be called that, even by your mother. But it still comes hard to me! I must go." "I'll ask Lucius Decumius's boys to find you a litter and escort you," said Caesar. "I have a litter," said Aunt Julia. "Mucia isn't allowed to go out on foot, so we traveled between the Quirinal and the Subura in extreme comfort or we would have had we not shared the conveyance with Julia Antonia, who nearly washed us away. We also have some stout fellows to escort us." "And I came by litter too," said Ju Ju. "Degenerate!" sniffed Aurelia. "You'd all do better to walk." "I'd love to walk," said Mucia Tertia softly, "but husbands don't see things the way you do, Aurelia. Gnaeus Pompeius thinks it unseemly for me to walk." Caesar's ears pricked. Aha! Some faint discontent! She was feeling constricted, too hedged about. But he said nothing, simply waited and chatted to everyone while a servant ran up to the crossroads square to summon the litters. "You don't look well, Aunt Julia" was the last subject he broached, and leaving it until he was handing her into her side of the roomy conveyance Pompey had provided for Mucia Tertia. "I'm growing old, Caesar," she said in a whisper, giving his hand a squeeze. "Fifty seven. But there's nothing the matter except that my bones ache when the weather's cold. I'm beginning to dread winters." "Are you warm enough up there on the outer Quirinal?" he asked sharply. "Your house is exposed to the north wind. Shall I have your cellar fitted with a hypocausis? "Save your money, Caesar. If I need it, I can afford to install a furnace myself," she said, and shut the curtains. "She isn't well, you know," he said to his mother as they went back into the apartment. Aurelia thought about that, then gave measured judgement. "She'd be well enough, Caesar, if she had more to live for. But husband and son are both dead. She has no one except us and Mucia Tertia. And we are not enough." The reception room was ablaze with the little flames of lamps and the shutters had been closed against the chill wind percolating down the light well. It looked warm and cheery, and there on the floor with Cinnilla was Caesar's daughter, almost six years old. An exquisite child, fine boned and graceful, so fair she had a silver look. When she saw her father her great blue eyes sparkled; she held out her arms. Tata, tata!" she cried. "Pick me up!" He picked her up, pressed his lips against her pale pink cheek. "And how's my princess today?" And while he listened with every sign of fascination to a litany of small and girlish doings, Aurelia and Cinnilla watched them both. Cinnilla's thoughts got no further than the fact that she loved them, but Aurelia's dwelt upon that word, princess. She is exactly that, a princess. Caesar will go far, and one day he will be very rich. The suitors will be unnumbered. But he won't be as kind to her as my mother and stepfather/uncle were to me. He will give her to the man he needs the most no matter how she feels about it. So I must train her to accept her fate, to go to it gracefully and in good spirits.
On the twenty fourth day of December, Marcus Crassus finally celebrated his ovation. Since there had been an undeniable Samnite element in Spartacus's army, he had won two concessions from the Senate: instead of going afoot he was allowed to ride a horse; and instead of wearing the lesser crown of myrtle he was allowed to wear the triumphator's crown of laurel. A good crowd turned out to cheer him and his army, marched up from Capua for the occasion, though there were broad winks and many digs in the ribs at sight of the spoils, a poor collection. The whole of Rome knew Marcus Crassus's besetting sin. The numbers who attended Pompey's triumph on the last day of December were much greater, however. Somehow Pompey had managed to endear himself to the people of Rome, perhaps because of his relative youth, his golden beauty, that fancied resemblance to Alexander the Great, and a certain happy cast to his features. For the love they felt for Pompey was not of the same kind as the love they had used to feel for Gaius Marius, who continued (despite all Sulla's efforts) to remain the favorite person in living memory. At about the same time that the curule elections were being held in Rome early in December, Metellus Pius finally crossed the Alps into Italian Gaul with his army, which he proceeded to disband before settling its troops in the wide rich lands to the north of the Padus River. Whether because he had sensed something in Pompey toward the end of their period together in Spain that had caused him to suspect that Pompey would not be content with a return to obscurity, the Piglet had remained obdurately aloof from the troubles in Rome. When written to in appeal by Catulus, Hortensius and the other prestigious Caecilii Metelli, he had refused to discuss matters which, he maintained, his long absence in Spain disqualified him from commenting upon. And when he did reach Rome at the end of January he celebrated a modest triumph with those troops who had accompanied him to Rome for the occasion, and took his seat in a Senate supervised by Pompey and Crassus as if nothing whatsoever was amiss. It was an attitude which spared him much pain, though it also meant he never did receive as much credit for the defeat of Quintus Sertorius as he deserved. The lex Pompeia Licinia de tribunicia potestate was tabled in the House early in January under the aegis of Pompey, who held the fasces as senior consul. The popularity of this law, restoring as it did full powers to the tribunate of the plebs, flattened senatorial opposition. All those whom Pompey and Crassus had thought to hear roaring against it in the House contented themselves with a few bleats; the senatus consultum recommending to the Assembly of the People that the law be passed was obtained by a near unanimous vote. Some had quibbled that it should by rights have gone to the Centuriate Assembly for ratification, but Caesar, Hortensius and Cicero all asserted firmly that only a tribal assembly could ratify measures involving the tribes. Within the three stipulated market days, the lex Pompeia Licinia passed into law. Once more the tribunes of the plebs could veto laws and magistrates, bring forward plebiscites having the force of law in their Plebeian Assembly without the senatorial blessing of a senatus consultum, and even prosecute for treason, extortion and other gubernatorial transgressions. Caesar was speaking in the House on a regular basis now; since he was always worth listening to witty, interesting, brief, pungent he soon gathered a following, and was asked with ever increasing frequency to publish his speeches, considered every bit as good as Cicero's. Even Cicero had been heard to say that Caesar was the best orator in Rome after himself, that is. Anxious to utilize some of his newly restored powers, the tribune of the plebs Plautius announced in the Senate that he was going to legislate in the Plebeian Assembly to give back their citizenships and rights to those condemned with Lepidus and with Quintus Sertorius. Caesar rose at once to speak in favor of the law, and pleaded with very moving eloquence to extend this measure to include all those proscribed by Sulla. Yet when the Senate refused to grant the extension and endorsed the Plautian law only in respect of those outlawed for following Lepidus and Sertorius, Caesar looked strangely cheerful, not at all put out. "The House turned you down, Caesar," said Marcus Crassus, puzzled, "yet here I find you positively purring!" "My dear Crassus, I knew perfectly well they'd never sanction a pardon for Sulla's proscribed!" said Caesar, smiling. "It would mean too many important men who got fat off the proscriptions must give everything back. No, no! However, it looked very much as if the Catulus rump was going to succeed in blocking pardons for the Lepidans and Sertorians, so I made that measure look modest enough to seem inviting by harping on Sulla's proscribed. If you want something done and you think it's going to be opposed, Marcus Crassus, always go much further than what you want. The opposition becomes so incensed by the additions that it quite loses sight of the fact that it originally opposed the lesser measure." Crassus grinned. "You're a politician to the core, Caesar. I hope some of your opponents don't study your methods too closely, or you'll find life harder than it is." "I love politics," said Caesar simply. "You love everything you do, so you jump in boots and all. That's your secret. Well, that and the size of your mind." "Don't flatter me, Crassus, my head is quite large enough," said Caesar, who loved to pun on the fact that "head" meant what resided on a man's shoulders and also meant what resided between a man's legs. "Too big, if you ask me," said Crassus, laughing. "You'd better be a little more discreet in your dealings with other men's wives, at least for the time being. I hear our new censors are going to examine the sentorial rolls the way a sedulous nursemaid looks for nits."
There were censors for the first time since Sulla had cut that office from the list of magistracies; an unlikely, peculiar pair in Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus and Lucius Gellius Poplicola. Everyone knew they were Pompey's hirelings, but when Pompey had mooted their names in the House, the more appropriate men who had planned to run for censor Catulus and Metellus Pius, Vatia Isauricus and Curio all withdrew, leaving the field clear for Clodianus and Gellius. Crassus's prediction was right. It was normal censorial practice to let all the State contracts first, but after letting the sacred contracts for feeding the Capitoline geese and chickens and other religious matters, Clodianus and Gellius proceeded to the senatorial rolls. Their findings were read out at a special contio they called from the rostra in the lower Forum Romanum, and created a huge stir. No less than sixty four senators were expelled, most of them for being under suspicion of having taken bribes (or given out bribes) when on jury duty. Many of the jurors at the trial of Statius Albius Oppianicus were expelled, and the successful prosecutor of Oppianicus, his stepson Cluentius, was demoted by being transferred from his rural tribe to urban Esquilina. But more sensational by far were the expulsions of one of last year's quaestors, Quintus Curius, last year's senior consul, Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura, and Gaius Antonius Hybrida, the Monster of Lake Orchomenus. It was not impossible for an expelled senator to re enter the House, but he could not expect to do it through the offices of the censors who had expelled him; he had to stand for election as either a quaestor or a tribune of the plebs. A wearisome business for Lentulus Sura, who had already been consul! And not one he contemplated immediately, for Lentulus Sura was in love, and didn't care very much about the Senate. Shortly after his expulsion he married the feckless Julia Antonia. Caesar had been right. Julia Antonia was a poor picker of husbands, and Lentulus Sura a worse choice than Marcus Antonius the Man of Chalk. The Senate finished with, Clodianus and Gellius went back to contract letting, this time civilian rather than sacred. These mostly concerned the farming of provincial taxes and tithes, though they also covered the erection or restoration of numerous State owned buildings and public facilities, from the refurbishment of latrines to circus bleachers, bridge making, basilicae. Again there was a huge stir; the censors announced that they were abandoning the system of taxation Sulla had brought in to relieve Asia Province. Lucullus and Marcus Cotta had pursued their war against King Mithridates to what seemed a successful conclusion, though the laurels definitely belonged to Lucullus. The year of the Pompey and Crassus consulship saw Mithridates obliged to flee to the court of his son in law Tigranes of Armenia (where Tigranes refused to see him), and Lucullus just about in full possession of Pontus as well as Cappadocia and Bithynia; only Tigranes remained to be dealt with. His hands free to bury themselves in some much needed administrative work, Lucullus promptly began to see to the tangled financial affairs of Asia Province, which he had been governing in tandem with Cilicia for three years. And cracked down on the tax farming publicani so hard that on two occasions he exercised his right within his province to execute and had several of these men beheaded, as had Marcus Aemilius Scaurus some years earlier. The squeals of outrage in Rome were enormous, especially when Lucullus's reforms made it even more difficult for the tax farmers to operate at a maximum profit than had Sulla's. A member of the arch conservative senatorial rump, Lucullus had never been popular in high business circles, which meant that men like Crassus and Atticus loathed him. Perhaps because alone among the current crop of generals Lucullus bade fair to eclipsing him, Pompey too disliked Lucullus. It was therefore no surprise when Pompey's pair of tame censors announced that Sulla's system in Asia Province was to be abandoned; things would go back to the way they had been in the old pre Sullan days. But all of this made no difference to Lucullus, who ignored the censorial directives. While ever he was governor of Asia Province, he said, he would continue with Sulla's system, which was a model and ought to be implemented in every one of Rome's provinces. The hastily shaped companies which had marshaled men to go out to Asia Province faltered, voices were raised in Forum and Senate, and all the most powerful knights thundered that Lucullus must be dismissed as governor. Still Lucullus continued to ignore directives from Rome, and to ignore his precarious position. More important to him by far was the tidying up which always followed in the wake of big wars; by the time he left his two provinces they would be proper. Though he was not by nature or inclination attracted to arch conservative senators like Catulus and Lucullus, Caesar nonetheless had cause to be grateful to Lucullus; he had received a letter from Queen Oradaltis of Bithynia.
My daughter has come home, Caesar. I'm sure you know that Lucius Licinius Lucullus has had great success in his war against King Mithridates, and that for a year now he has been campaigning in Pontus itself. Among the many fortresses the King maintained, Cabeira had always been thought to be his strongest. But this year it fell to Lucullus, who found all sorts of horrible things the dungeons were full of political prisoners and potentially dangerous relatives who had been tortured, or used as specimens by the King in his constant experimentations with poison. I will not dwell upon such hideous matters, I am too happy. Among the women Lucullus found in residence was Nysa. She had been there for nearly twenty years, and has come home to me a woman of more than sixty. However, Mithridates had treated her well according to his lights she was held to be no different from the small collection of minor wives and concubines he kept in Cabeira. He also kept some of his sisters there whom he didn't wish to see marry or have any opportunity to bear children, so my poor girl had plenty of spinsterly company. For that matter, the King has so many wives and concubines that those in Cabeira had also been living like spinsters for years! A colony of old maids. When Lucullus opened up their prison he was very kind to all the women he found, and took exquisite care that there should be no masculine offense offered to them. The way Nysa tells it, he behaved as did Alexander the Great toward the mother, wives and other harem members of the third King Darius. I believe Lucullus sent the Pontic women to his ally in Cimmeria, the son of Mithridates called Machares. Nysa he freed completely the moment he discovered who she was. But more than that, Caesar. He loaded her down with gold and presents and sent her back to me under an escort of troops sworn to honor her. Can you imagine this aged, never very beautiful woman's pleasure at journeying through the countryside as free as any bird? Oh, and to see her again! I knew nothing until she walked through the front door of my villa in Rheba, glowing like a young girl. She was so happy to see me! My last wish has come true, I have my daughter back. She came just in time. My dear old dog, Sulla, died of antiquity a month before her advent, and I despaired. The servants tried desperately to persuade me to get another dog, but you know how it is. You think of all the special wonders and laughable antics that beloved pet has owned, his place in your family life, and it seems such a betrayal to bury him, then hurry some other creature into his basket. I'm not saying it's wrong to do so, but a little time has to go by before the new pet takes on characteristics special to him, and I very much fear I would have been dead before any new pet became a person in his own right. No need for dying now! Nysa wept to find her father gone, of course, but we have settled down here together in such harmony and delight we both handline fish from the jetty and stroll through the village for our constitutional. Lucullus did invite us to live in the palace at Nicomedia, but we have decided to remain where we are. And we have a dear little pup named Lucullus. Please, Caesar, try to find the time to journey to the east again! I would so much like you to meet Nysa, and I miss you dreadfully.
3
It was last years tribune of the plebs, Marcus Lollius Palicanus, whom the delegates from all the cities of Sicily except Syracuse and Messana approached to prosecute Gaius Verres. But Palicanus referred them to Pompey, and Pompey in turn referred them to Marcus Tullius Cicero as the ideal man for that particular job. Verres had gone to Sicily as its governor after his urban praetorship, and mostly thanks to Spartacus remained its governor for three years. He had only just returned to Rome when the Sicilian delegation sought out Cicero during January. Both Pompey and Palicanus were personally concerned; Palicanus had gone to the assistance of some of his clients when Verres persecuted them, and Pompey had amassed a considerable number of clients in Sicily during his occupation of it on Sulla's behalf. Quaestor in Lilybaeum under Sextus Peducaeus the year before Verres arrived to govern Sicily in Peducaeus's place, Cicero had developed an enormous fondness for Sicily too. Not to mention having amassed a nice little retinue of clients. Yet when the Sicilians came to see him, he backed away. "I never prosecute," he explained. "I defend." "But Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus recommended you! He said you were the only man who could win. Please, we beg of you, break your rule and prosecute Gaius Verres! If we do not win, Sicily could well rise up against Rome." "Raped the place, did he?" asked Cicero clinically. "Yes, he raped it. But having raped it, Marcus Tullius, he then dismembered it. We have nothing left! All our works of art are gone from every temple, paintings and statues both, and any valuables in the hands of private owners what can we say about a man who actually had the temerity to enslave a free woman famous for her tapestry work and make her run a factory for his profit? He stole the moneys the Treasury of Rome gave him to purchase grain, then commandeered the grain from the growers without paying for it! He has stolen farms, estates, even inheritances. The list is endless!" This catalogue of perfidies startled Cicero greatly, but still he shook his head. "I'm sorry, but I do not prosecute." The spokesman drew a breath. "Then we will go home," he said. We had thought that a man so knowledgeable about Sicily's history that he went to great trouble to rediscover the whereabouts of the tomb of Archimedes would see our plight, and help. But you have lost your affection for Sicily, and clearly you do not value Gnaeus Pompeius as he values you." To be reminded of Pompey and of a famous coup he had indeed rediscovered the lost tomb of Archimedes outside the city of Syracuse was too much. Prosecution in Cicero's opinion was a waste of his talents, for the (highly illegal) fees were always far less than the inducements offered by some sweating ex governor or publicanus in danger of losing everything. Nor (such was the mentality of men) was it popular to prosecute! The prosecuting advocate was always seen as a nasty piece of work determined to make a ruin out of some hapless individual's life, whereas the defending advocate who got the hapless individual off was a popular hero. It made not the slightest difference that most of these hapless individuals were cunning, avaricious and guilty to the extreme; any threat to a man's right to conduct his life as he saw fit was bound to be considered an infringement of his personal entitlements. Cicero sighed. "Very well, very well, I will take the case!" he said. "But you must remember that the defending attorneys speak after the prosecuting team, so that the jury has clean forgotten every word the prosecution said by the time it is given the directive to find a verdict. You must also remember that Gaius Verres is very highly connected. His wife is a Caecilia Metella, the man who should have been consul this year is his brother in law, he has another brother in law who is the present governor of Sicily you'll get no help from that quarter, and nor will I! and every other Caecilius Metellus will be on his side. If I prosecute, then Quintus Hortensius will defend, and other advocates almost as famous will join him as his juniors. I said I will take the case. That does not mean I think I can win." The delegation had hardly left his house before Cicero was regretting his decision; who needed to offend every Caecilius Metellus in Rome when his chances of becoming consul rested on the slender base of personal ability in the law courts? He was as much a New Man as his detested fellow man from Arpinum, Gaius Marius, but he didn't have a soldiering bone in his body and a New Man's progress was harder if he could not earn fame on the battlefield. Of course he knew why he had accepted; that absurd loyalty he felt he owed to Pompey. The years might be many and the legal accolades multiple, but how could he ever forget the careless kindness of a seventeen year old cadet toward the cadet his father despised? As long as he lived Cicero would be grateful to Pompey for helping him through that ghastly, miserable military experience in the ranks of Pompey Strabo's cadets; for shielding him from Pompey Strabo's indifferent cruelties and terrifying rages. No other hand had been raised to assist him, yet young Pompey, the general's son, had raised his hand. He had been warm that winter thanks to Pompey, he had been given clerical duties thanks to Pompey, he had never needed to lift a sword in battle thanks to Pompey. And he could never, never forget it. So off to the Carinae he betook himself to see Pompey. "I just wanted to tell you," he said in a voice of doom, "that I have decided to prosecute Gaius Verres." "Oh, splendid!" said Pompey heartily. "A lot of Verres's victims are or sometimes were my clients. You can win, I know you can. And name your favors." "I need no favors from you, Magnus, and you can never be in any doubt that it is I who owe you." Pompey looked startled. "You do? On what account?" "You made my year with your father's army bearable." "Oh, that!" Laughing, Pompey shook Cicero by the arm. "I hardly think that's worth a lifetime's gratitude." "To me it is," said Cicero, tears in his eyes. "We shared a lot during the Italian War." Perhaps Pompey was remembering less palatable things they had shared, like the search for his father's naked and insulted body, for he shook his head as if to banish the Italian War from his mind, and gave Cicero a beaker of excellent wine. Well, my friend, you just let me know what I can do to assist you now." "I will," said Cicero gratefully. "All those Little Goat men of the Caecilii Metelli will be against this prosecution, of course," said Pompey thoughtfully. "So will Catulus, Hortensius, others." "And you've just mentioned the main reason why I have to get this case heard early enough in the year. I daren't run the risk of having the case bound over until next year Little Goat and Hortensius will be consuls then, everyone seems to be saying." "A pity in a way," said Pompey. "Next year there may well be knight juries again, and that would go against Verres." Not if the consuls rig the court behind the scenes, Magnus. Besides, there's no guarantee our praetor Lucius Cotta will find in favor of knight juries. I was talking to him the other day he thinks his enquiries into the composition of court juries are going to take months and he's not convinced knight juries will be any better than senatorial ones. Knights can't be prosecuted for taking bribes." "We can change the law," said Pompey, who, having no respect for the law, thought that whenever it became inconvenient it should be changed to suit himself, naturally. "That could prove difficult." "I don't see why." "Because," said Cicero patiently, "to change that law would mean enacting another law in one of the two tribal Assemblies both dominated by knights." "They've indemnified Crassus and me against our action last year," said Pompey, unable to distinguish the difference between one law and another. "That is because you've been very nice to them, Magnus. And they want you to go on being very nice to them. A law making them culpable for accepting bribes is quite a separate pot of stew." "Oh, well, perhaps as you say Lucius Cotta won't find in favor of knight juries. It was just a thought." Cicero rose to go. "Thank you again, Magnus." "Keep me informed."
* * *
One month later Cicero notified the urban praetor, Lucius Cotta, that he would be prosecuting Gaius Verres in the Extortion Court on behalf of the cities of Sicily, and that he would be asking for the sum of forty two and a half million sesterces one thousand seven hundred talents in damages, as well as for the restoration of all works of art and valuables stolen from Sicily's temples and citizens. Though he had come back from Sicily swaggering, confident that his position as the brother in law of Metellus Little Goat would be adequate protection against possible prosecution, when Gaius Verres heard that Cicero Cicero, who never prosecuted! had lodged an intention to prosecute, he panicked. Word was sent immediately to his brother in law Lucius Metellus the governor of Sicily to bury any evidence Verres himself might have overlooked in his rush to remove his plunder from the island. Significantly, neither Syracuse nor Messana had joined with the other cities to press charges; that was due to the fact that Syracuse and Messana had aided and abetted Verres, and shared in the proceeds of his nefarious activities. But how fortunate that the new governor was his wife's middle brother! The two brothers left in Rome, Quintus called Little Goat (who was certain to be consul next year) and the youngest of the three sons of Metellus Caprarius, Marcus, hastily conferred with Verres to see what could be done to avert the disaster of a trial, and agreed to bring Quintus Hortensius into the case. Certainly Hortensius would lead the defense if the matter came to court, but at this stage what was needed was a ploy aimed at averting a trial, especially one conducted by Cicero. In March, Hortensius lodged a complaint with the urban praetor; Cicero, he alleged, was not the proper man to prosecute any case against Gaius Verres. Instead of Cicero, Hortensius nominated Quintus Caecilius Niger, a relative of the Little Goats who had been Verres's quaestor in Sicily during the middle one of his three years as governor. The only way Cicero's fitness to prosecute could be determined was to hold a special hearing called a divinatio guesswork (so named because the judges at this special hearing reached a conclusion without hard evidence being presented that is, they arrived at a finding by guesswork). Each prospective prosecutor was required to tell the judges why he ought to be the chief prosecutor, and after listening to Caecilius Niger, who spoke poorly, and Cicero, the judges found in favor of Cicero and directed that the case be heard quickly. Verres, the two Metellus Little Goats and Hortensius had to think again. "You'll be praetor next year, Marcus," said the great advocate to the youngest brother, "so we'll have to make sure the lots fall on you to become president of the Extortion Court. This year's president, Glabrio, loathes Gaius Verres. And if for no other reason than that he loathes you, Verres, Glabrio won't allow the slightest breath of scandal to touch his court yes, what I'm saying is that if the case is heard this year and Glabrio is court president, we won't be able to bribe the jury. And don't forget that this year Lucius Cotta will be watching every important jury like a cat a mouse. Because this case will attract a lot of attention, I think Lucius Cotta is going to base much of his opinion about the fitness of all senator juries on it. As for Pompeius and Crassus they don't love us at all!" "You mean," said Gaius Verres, whose brass colored beauty was looking a little tarnished these days, that we have to get my case held over until next year, when Marcus will be president of the Extortion Court." "Exactly," said Hortensius. "Quintus Metellus and I will be the consuls next year a great help! It won't be difficult for us to rig the lots to give Marcus the Extortion Court, and it makes no difference whether next year's juries are senatorial or equestrian we'll bribe!" "But it's only April," said Verres gloomily. "I don't see how we can stall proceedings until the end of the year." "Oh, we can," said Hortensius confidently. "In these cases where evidence has to be gathered at a far distance from Rome and up and down a country as big as Sicily! it takes any prosecutor six to eight months to prepare his case. I know Cicero hasn't begun because he's still here in Rome, and hasn't sent any agents out to Sicily yet. Naturally he'll hope to pull in evidence and witnesses fast, and that's where Lucius Metellus comes in as the governor of Sicily, he will put every obstacle possible in the path of Cicero or his agents." Hortensius beamed. "I predict that Cicero won't be ready before October, if then. Of course that's time enough for a trial. But we won't let it be! Because we will apply to try another case in Glabrio's court ahead of yours, Gaius Verres. The victim will have to be someone who has left a trail of hard evidence behind him that we can gather very quickly. Some poor wretch who extorted in a minor way, not an important fish like the governor of a province. We should choose the prefect of an administrative district in say, Greece. I have a victim in mind we will have enough evidence to satisfy the urban praetor that we have a case by the end of Quinctilis. Cicero can't possibly be ready by then. But we will be!" Which victim are you thinking of?'' asked Metellus Little Goat, looking relieved; naturally he and his brothers had shared in Gaius Verres's profits, but that didn't mean he was willing to suffer a brother in law exiled and disgraced for extortion. "I'm thinking of that Quintus Curtius who was Varro Lucullus's legate, and was prefect of Achaea while Varro Lucullus was governor of Macedonia. If Varro Lucullus hadn't been so busy in Thrace conquering the Bessi and taking boat rides down the Danubius all the way to the sea, he would have ensured that Curtius was prosecuted himself. But by the time he came home and found out about Curtius's little peculations he deemed it too late and too minor to bother about, so he never instituted proceedings. But the evidence is there for the gathering, and Varro Lucullus would be delighted to help land our little fish. I'll lodge an application with the urban praetor to have the case against Quintus Curtius heard this year in the Extortion Court," said Hortensius. "Which means," said Verres eagerly, "that Lucius Cotta will direct Glabrio to hear whichever of the two cases is ready first, and as you say, it will be Curtius. Then once you're in court you'll drag the proceedings out until the end of the year! Cicero and my trial will have to wait. Brilliant, Quintus Hortensius, absolutely brilliant!" "Yes, I think it's pretty cunning," said Hortensius smugly. "Cicero will be furious," said Metellus Little Goat. "I'd adore to see that!" said Hortensius. But they didn't see Cicero worked into a fury after all. The moment he heard that Hortensius had applied to try an ex prefect of Achaea in the Extortion Court, he understood exactly what Hortensius was aiming at. Dismay smote him, followed by despair. His beloved cousin Lucius Cicero was visiting from Arpinum, and saw the instant that Cicero entered his study how disturbed he was. "What's wrong?" asked Lucius Cicero. "Hortensius! He's going to have another case ready to be heard in the Extortion Court before I can assemble my evidence to try Gaius Verres." Cicero sat down, the picture of depression. "We'll be held over until next year and I'd be willing to bet my entire fortune that the Metelli Little Goats have already cooked it up with Hortensius to make sure Marcus Little Goat is the praetor in charge of next year's Extortion Court." "And Gaius Verres will be acquitted," said Lucius Cicero. "Bound to be! Can't not be!" "Then you'll have to be ready first," said Lucius Cicero. "What, before the end of Quinctilis? That's the date our friend Hortensius has asked the urban praetor to put aside. I can't be ready by then! Sicily is huge, the present governor is Verres's brother in law and will impede me wherever I go I can't, can't, can't do it, I tell you!" "Of course you can," said Lucius Cicero, standing up and looking brisk. "Dear Marcus Tullius, when you sink your teeth into a case no one is smoother or better organized. You're so orderly and logical, you have such method! And you know Sicily very well, you have friends there including many who suffered at the hands of the frightful Gaius Verres. Yes, the governor will try to slow you down, but all those people Verres injured will be trying even harder to speed you up! It is the end of April now. Get your work in Rome finished within two market intervals. While you do that I will arrange for a ship to take us to Sicily, and to Sicily the pair of us will go by the middle of May. Come on, Marcus, you can do it!" "Would you really come with me, Lucius?" asked Cicero, face lightening. "You're almost as well organized as I am, you'd be the most tremendous help to me." His natural enthusiasm was returning; suddenly the task didn't seem quite so formidable. "I'll have to see my clients. I don't have enough money to hire fast ships and gallop all over Sicily in two wheeled gigs harnessed to racing mules." He slapped one hand on his desk. "By Jupiter, Lucius, I'd love to do it! If only to see the look on Hortensius's face!" "Then do it we will!" cried Lucius, grinning. "Fifty days from Rome to Rome, that's all the time we'll be able to spare. Ten days to travel, forty days to gather evidence." And while Lucius Cicero went off to the Porticus Aemilia in the Port of Rome to talk to shipping agents, Cicero went round to the house on the Quirinal where his clients were staying. He knew the senior of them well Hiero of Lilybaeum, who had been ethnarch of that important western Sicilian port city when Cicero had been quaestor there. My cousin Lucius and I are going to have to gather all our Sicilian evidence within fifty days," Cicero explained, "if I am to beat Hortensius's case into court. We can do it but only if you're willing to bear the expense." He flushed. "I am not a rich man, Hiero, I can't afford speedy transport. There may be some people I have to pay for information or items I need, and there will certainly be witnesses I'll have to bring to Rome." Hiero had always liked and admired Cicero, whose time in Lilybaeum had been a joy for every Sicilian Greek doing business with Rome's quaestor, for Cicero was quick, brilliant, innovative when it came to account books and fiscal problems, and a splendid administrator. He had also been liked and admired because he was such a rarity: an honest man. We are happy to advance you whatever you need, Marcus Tullius," said Hiero, "but I think now is a good time to discuss the matter of your fee. We have little to give except cash moneys, and I understand Roman advocates are averse to accepting cash moneys too easy for the censors to trace. Art works and the like are the customary donatives, I know. But we have nothing left worthy of you." "Oh, don't worry about that!" said Cicero cheerfully. "I know exactly what I want as a fee. I intend to run for plebeian aedile for next year. My games will be adequate, but I cannot compete with the really rich men who are usually aediles. Whereas I can win a great deal of popularity if I distribute cheap grain. Pay me in grain, Hiero it is the one thing made of gold that springs out of the ground each and every year as a fresh crop. I will buy it from you out of my aedilieian fines, but they won't run to more than two sesterces the modius. If you guarantee to sell me grain for that price to the amount I require, I will ask no other fee of you. Provided, that is, I win your case." "Done!" said Hiero instantly, and turned his attention to making out a draft on his bank for ten talents in Cicero's name.
Marcus and Lucius Cicero were away exactly fifty days, during which time they worked indefatigably gathering their evidence and witnesses. And though the governor, various pirates, the magistrates of Syracuse and Messana (and a few Roman tax farmers) tried to slow their progress down, there were far more people some of great influence interested in speeding them up. While the quaestorian records in Syracuse were either missing or inadequate, the quaestorian records in Lilybaeum yielded mines of evidence. Witnesses came forward, so did accountants and merchants, not to mention grain farmers. Fortune favored Cicero too; when it came time to go home and only four days of the fifty were left, the weather held so perfectly that he, Lucius and all the witnesses and records were able to make the voyage to Ostia in a sleek, light, open boat. They arrived in Rome on the last day of June, with a month left in which to get the case organized. In the course of that month Cicero stood as a candidate for plebeian aedile as well as working on the lawsuit. How he fitted everything in was afterward a mystery to him; but the truth was that Cicero never functioned better than when his desk was so loaded with work that he could hardly see over the top of it. Decisions flickered like shafts of lightning, everything fell into place, the silver tongue and the golden voice produced wit and wisdom spontaneously, the fine looking head, so massive and bulbous, struck everyone who saw it as noble, and the striking person who sometimes cowered inside Cicero's darkest corner was on full display. During the course of that month he even devised a completely new technique for conducting a trial, a technique which would do what so far Roman legal procedures had never managed to do get an overwhelming mass of hard and damning evidence in front of a jury so quickly and effectively that it left the defense with no defense. His reappearance from Sicily after what seemed an absence of scant days had Hortensius gasping, especially as gathering a case against the hapless Quintus Curtius had not proven as easy as Hortensius had surmised even with the willing assistance of Varro Lucullus, Atticus and the city of Athens. However, a moment's cool reflection served to convince Hortensius that Cicero was bluffing. He couldn't possibly be ready to go before September at the earliest! Nor had Cicero found everything in Rome to his satisfaction upon his return. Metellus Little Goat and his youngest brother had put in some excellent work on Cicero's Sicilian clients, who were now certain that Cicero had lost interest in the case he had accepted an enormous bribe from Gaius Verres, whispered the Metelli Little Goats through carefully chosen agents. It took Cicero several interviews with Hiero and his colleagues to learn why they were all atwitter. Once he did find out, to allay their fears was not difficult. Quinctilis brought the three sets of elections, with the curule Centuriate Assembly ones held first. As far as Cicero's case was concerned, the results were dismal; Hortensius and Metellus Little Goat were next year's consuls and Marcus Little Goat was successfully returned as one of the praetors. Then came the elections in the Assembly of the People; the fact that Caesar was elected a quaestor at the top of the poll hardly impinged upon Cicero's consciousness. After which the twenty seventh day of Quinctilis rolled round, and Cicero found himself elected plebeian aedile together with a Marcus Caesonius (no relation to the Julii with the cognomen of Caesar); they thought they would deal well together, and Cicero was profoundly glad that his colleague was a very wealthy man. Thanks to the present consuls, Pompey and Crassus, so many things were going on in Rome that summer that elections were of no moment; instead of deliberately puffing them up into the position of prime importance, the electoral officers and the Senate wanted everything to do with elections over and done with. Therefore on the day following the Plebeian Assembly elections the last of the three the lots were cast to see what everyone was going to do next year. No surprise whatsoever then that the lots magically bestowed the Extortion Court on Marcus Little Goat! Everything was now set up to exonerate Gaius Verres early in the New Year. On the last day of Quinctilis, Cicero struck. As no comitia meetings had been scheduled, the urban praetor's tribunal was open and Lucius Aurelius Cotta in personal attendance. Forth marched Cicero with his clients in tow, announced that he had completely prepared his case against Gaius Verres, and demanded that Lucius Cotta and the president of the Extortion Court, Manius Acilius Glabrio, should schedule a day to begin the trial as soon as they saw fit. Preferably very quickly. The entire Senate had watched the duel between Cicero and Hortensius with bated breath. The Caecilius Metellus faction was in a minority, and neither Lucius Cotta nor Glabrio belonged to it; in fact, most of the Conscript Fathers were dying to see Cicero beat the system set up by Hortensius and the Metelli Little Goats to get Verres off. Lucius Cotta and Glabrio were therefore delighted to oblige Cicero with the earliest possible hearing. The first two days of Sextilis were feriae which did not preclude the hearing of criminal trials but the third day was more difficult on it was held the procession of the Crucified Dogs. When the Gauls had invaded Rome and attempted to establish a bridgehead on the Capitol four hundred years earlier, the watchdogs hadn't barked; what woke the consul Marcus Manlius and enabled him to foil the attempt was the cackling of the sacred geese. Ever since that night, on the anniversary day a solemn cavalcade wound its way around the Circus Maximus. Nine dogs were crucified on nine crosses made of elder wood, and one goose was garlanded and carried on a purple litter to commemorate the treachery of the dogs and the heroism of the geese. Not a good day for a criminal trial, dogs being chthonic animals. So the case against Gaius Verres was scheduled to begin on the fifth day of Sextilis, in the midst of a Rome stunned by summer and stuffed with visitors agog to see all the special treats Pompey and Crassus had laid on. Stiff competition, but no one made the mistake of thinking that the trial of Gaius Verres would attract no onlookers, even if it continued through Crassus's public feast and Pompey's victory games. Under Sulla's laws governing his new standing courts the general trial procedure originated by Gaius Servilius Glaucia was preserved, though considerably refined refined to the detriment of speed. It occurred in two sections, the actio prima and the actio secunda, with a break in between the two actiones of several days, though the court president was at liberty to make the break much longer if he so desired. The actio prima consisted of a long speech from the chief prosecutor followed by an equally long speech from the chief of the defense, then more long speeches alternating between the prosecution and the defense until all the junior advocates were used up. After that came the prosecution's witnesses, each one being cross examined by the defense and perhaps re examined by the prosecution. If one side or the other filibustered, the hearing of witnesses could become very protracted. Then came the witnesses for the defense, with the prosecution cross examining each one, and perhaps the defense re examining. After that came a long debate between the chief prosecutor and the chief defender; these long debates could also occur between each witness if either side desired. The actio prima finally ended with the last speech delivered by the chief defense counsel. The actio secunda was more or less a repetition of the actio prima, though witnesses were not always called. Here there occurred the greatest and most impassioned orations, for after the concluding speeches of prosecution and defense the jury was required to give its verdict. No time for discussion of this verdict was allowed to the jury, which meant that the verdict was handed down while the jurors still had the words of the chief defense counsel ringing in their ears. This was the principal reason why Cicero loved to defend, hated to prosecute. But Cicero knew how to win the case against Gaius Verres: all he needed was a court president willing to accommodate him. Praetor Manius Acilius Glabrio, president of this court, I wish to conduct my case along different lines than are the custom. What I propose is not illegal. It is novel, that is all. My reasons lie in the extraordinary number of witnesses I will call, and in the equally extraordinary number of different offenses with which I am going to charge the defendant Gaius Verres," said Cicero. "Is the president of the court willing to listen to an outline of what I propose?'' Hortensius rushed forward. "What's this, what's this?" he demanded. "I ask again, what is this? The case against Gaius Verres must be conducted on the usual lines! I insist!" "I will listen to what Marcus Tullius Cicero proposes," said Glabrio, and added gently, "without interruptions." "I wish to dispense with the long speeches," said Cicero, "and concentrate upon one offense at a time. The crimes of Gaius Verres are so many and so varied that it is vital the members of the jury keep each crime straight in their heads. By dealing with one crime at a time, I wish to assist the court in keeping everything straight, that is all. So what I propose to do is briefly to outline one particular crime, then present each of my witnesses plus my evidence to do with that crime. As you see, I intend to work alone I have absolutely no assistant advocates. The actio prima in the case of Gaius Verres should not contain any long speeches by either the prosecution or the defense. It is a waste of the court's time, especially in light of the fact that there is at least one more case for this court to hear before this year is ended that of Quintus Curtius. So I say, let the actio secunda contain all the magnificent speeches! It is only after all the magnificent speeches of the actio secunda have been given that the jury hands down its verdict, so I do not see how my colleague Quintus Hortensius can object to my asking for an actio prima procedure which will enable the jury to listen to our impassioned oratory during the actio secunda as if it had never heard any of what we said before! Because it won't have heard any of it! Oh, the freshness! The anticipation! The pleasure!" Hortensius was now looking a little uncertain; there was sound sense in what Cicero was saying. After all, Cicero hadn't asked for anything which might detract from the defense's entitlement to the last word, and Hortensius found himself very much liking the idea of being able to deliver his absolute best as a shock of juridical surprise at the end of the actio secunda. Yes, Cicero was right! Get the boring stuff over as quickly as possible in the actio prima, and save the Alexandrian lighthouse stuff for the grand finale. Thus when Glabrio looked at him enquiringly, Hortensius was able to say smoothly, "Pray ask Marcus Tullius to enlarge further." "Enlarge further, Marcus Tullius," said Glabrio. "There is little more to say, Manius Acilius. Only that the defending advocates be allowed not one drip more of time to speak than I spend speaking during the actio prima only, of course! I am willing to concede the defense as much time as they wish during the actio secunda. Since I see a formidable array of defending advocates, whereas I alone staff the prosecution, that will give the defense as much of an advantage as I think they ought to have. I ask only this: that the actio prima be conducted as I have outlined it." "The idea has considerable merit, Marcus Tullius," said Glabrio. "Quintus Hortensius, how do you say?" "Let it be as Marcus Tullius has outlined," said Hortensius. Only Gaius Verres looked worried. "Oh, I wish I knew what he was up to!" he whispered to Metellus Little Goat. "Hortensius ought not to have agreed!" "By the time the actio secunda comes around, Gaius Verres, I can assure you that the jury will have forgotten everything the witnesses said," his brother in law whispered back. "Then why is Cicero insisting on these changes?" "Because he knows he's going to lose, and he wants to make some sort of splash. How else than by innovation? Caesar used the same tack when he prosecuted the elder Dolabella insisted on innovations. He got a great deal of praise, but he lost the case. Just as Cicero will. Don't worry! Hortensius will win!"
The only remarks of a general nature Cicero made before he plunged into an outline of the first category of Gaius Verres's crimes were to do with the jury. Remember that the Senate has commissioned our urban praetor, Lucius Aurelius Cotta, to enquire into the composition of juries and has agreed to recommend his findings to the Assembly of the People to be ratified into law. Between the days of Gaius Gracchus and our Dictator, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the Senate completely lost control of a hitherto uncontested right to staff the juries of Rome's criminal courts. That privilege Gaius Gracchus handed to the knights and we all know the result of that! Sulla handed the new standing courts back to the Senate. But as the sixty four men our censors have expelled have shown, we senators have not honored the trust Sulla reposed in us. Gaius Verres is not the only person on trial here today. The Senate of Rome is also on trial! And if this senatorial jury fails to conduct itself in an honorable and honest way, then who can blame Lucius Cotta if he recommends that jury duty be taken off us Conscript Fathers? Members of this jury, I beseech you not to forget for one moment that you carry an enormous responsibility on your shoulders and the fate! and the reputation! of the Senate of Rome." And after that, having neatly confined the defense to the same time span as he used himself, Cicero plunged into hearing his witnesses and presenting his inanimate evidence. One by one they testified: grain thefts to the amount of three hundred thousand modii in just one year from just one small district, let alone the amounts looted from other districts; thefts of property which reduced the farmers of just one district from two hundred and fifty to eighty in three years, let alone the thefts of property from many other districts; embezzlement of the Treasury's moneys intended for the purchase of grain; usury at twenty four and more percent; the destruction or alteration of tithe records; the looting of statues and paintings from temples; the dinner guest who in front of his host prised the jewels out of ornamented cups; the dinner guest who on his way out scooped up all the gold and silver plate and popped it in bags the easier to carry it away; the building of a ship free of charge in which to carry back some of his loot to Rome; the condoning of pirate bases and cuts of pirate profits; the overturning of wills; and on, and on, and on. Cicero had records, documents, wax tablets with the changed figures still visible and witnesses galore, witnesses who could not be intimidated or discredited during cross examination. Nor had Cicero produced witnesses to grain thefts within just one district, but within many districts, and the catalogue of works by Praxiteles, Phidias, Polyclitus, Myron, Strongylion and every other famous sculptor which Verres had looted was supported by bills of "sale" that saw the owner of a Praxiteles Cupid obliged virtually to give it away to Verres. The evidence was massive and absolutely damning. It came like a flood, one category of theft or misuse of authority or exploitation after another for nine full days; the actio prima concluded on the fourteenth day of Sextilis. Hortensius was shaking when he left the court, but when Verres tried to speak to him he shook his head angrily. "At your place!" he snapped. "And bring your brothers in law!" The house of Gaius Verres lay in the best part of the Palatine; though it was actually one of the biggest properties on that hill, the amount of art crammed into it made it look as small and overcrowded as the yard of a sculptural mason in the Velabrum. Where no statues could stand or paintings hang there were cupboards in which resided vast collections of gold and silver plate, or jewelry, or folded lengths of gloriously worked embroidery and tapestry. Citrus wood tables of rarest grain supported on pedestals of ivory and gold jostled against gilded chairs or collided with fabulous couches. Outside in the peristyle garden were jammed the bigger statues, mostly bronzes, though gold and silver glittered there too. A clutter representing fifteen years of plundering and many fortunes. The four men gathered in Verres's study, no less a jumble, and perched wherever the precious objects allowed them. "You'll have to go into voluntary exile," said Hortensius. Verres gaped. "You're joking! There's the actio secunda still to come! Your speeches will get me off!" "You fool!" roared Hortensius. "Don't you understand? I was tricked, bamboozled, hoodwinked, gulled any word you like to describe the fact that Cicero has ruined any chance I ever had to win this wretched case! A year could go by between actio prima and actio secunda, Gaius Verres, I and my assistants could deliver the world's best oratory for a month, Gaius Verres and still the jury would not have forgotten that utter landslide of evidence! I tell you straight, Gaius Verres, that if I had known a tithe of your crimes before I started, I would never have agreed to defend you! You make Mummius or Paullus look like a tyro! And what have you done with so much money? Where is it, for Juno's sake? How could any man have spent it when that man pays a pittance for a Praxiteles Cupid and mostly doesn't pay at all? I've defended a lot of unmitigated villains in my time, but you win all the prizes! Go into voluntary exile, Gaius Verres!" Verres and the Metelli Little Goats had listened to this tirade with jaws dropped. Hortensius rose to his feet. Take what you can with you into exile, but if you want my advice, leave the art works you looted from Sicily behind. You'll never be able to carry more than you stole from Hera of Samos anyway. Concentrate on paintings and small stuff. And ship your money out of Rome at dawn tomorrow don't leave it a moment longer." He walked to the door, threading his way through the precious artifacts. "I will take my ivory sphinx by Phidias, however. Where is it?" "Your what?" gasped Verres. "I don't owe you anything you didn't get me off!" "You owe me one ivory sphinx by Phidias," said Hortensius, "and you ought to be thanking your good luck I didn't make it more. If nothing else is worth it to you, the advice I've just given you most definitely is. My ivory sphinx, Verres. Now!'' It was small enough for Hortensius to tuck under his left arm, hidden by folds of toga; an exquisite piece of work that was perfect down to the last detail in a feathered wing and the minute tufts of fur protruding between the clawed toes. "He's cool," said Marcus Little Goat after Hortensius went. "Ingrate!" snarled Verres. But the consul elect Metellus Little Goat frowned. "He's right, Gaius. You'll have to leave Rome by tomorrow night at the latest. Cicero will have the court seal this place as soon as he hears you're moving things out why on earth did you have to keep it all here?" "It isn't all here, Quintus. These are just the pieces I can't bear not to see every day. The bulk of it is stored on my place at Cortona." "Do you mean there's more! Ye gods, Gaius, I've known you for years, but you never cease to surprise me! No wonder our poor sister complains you ignore her! So this is only the stuff you can't bear not to see every day? And I've always thought you kept this place looking like a curio shop in the Porticus Margaritaria because you didn't even trust your slaves!'' Verres sneered. "Your sister complains, does she? And what right does she have to complain, when Caesar's been keeping her cunnus well lubricated for months? Does she think I'm a fool? Or so blind I can't see beyond a Myron bronze?" He got up. "I ought to have told Hortensius where most of my money went your face would have been mighty red, wouldn't it? The three Little Goats are expensive in laws, but you most of all, Quintus! The art I've managed to hang on to, but who gobbled up the proceeds from sales of grain, eh? Well, now's the end of it! I'll take my sphinx stealing advocate's advice and go into voluntary exile, where with any luck what I manage to take with me will stay mine! No more money for the Little Goats, including Metella Capraria! Let Caesar keep her in the style to which she's accustomed and I wish you luck prising money out of that man! Don't expect to see your sister's dowry returned. I'm divorcing her today on grounds of her adultery with Caesar." The result of this speech was the outraged exit of both his brothers in law; for a moment after they had gone Verres stood behind his desk, one finger absently caressing the smooth painted planes of a marble cheek belonging to a Polyclitus Hera. Then, shrugging, he shouted for his slaves. Oh, how could he bear to part with one single item contained in this house? Only the salvation of his skin and the knowledge that keeping some was better than losing all enabled him to walk with his steward from one precious object to the next. Go, stay, go, go, stay ... "When you've hired the wagons and if you blab about it to anyone, I'll crucify you! have them brought round to the back lane at midnight tomorrow. And everything had better be properly crated, hear me?"
As Hortensius had predicted, Cicero had Glabrio seal the abandoned house of Gaius Verres on the morning after his secret departure, and sent to his bank to stop the transfer of funds. Too late, of course; money was the most portable of all treasures, requiring nothing more than a piece of paper to be presented at the other end of a man's journey. Glabrio is empaneling a committee to fix damages, but I'm afraid they won't be huge," said Cicero to Hiero of Lilybaeum. "He's cleaned his money out of Rome. However, it looks as if most of what he stole from Sicily's temples has been left behind not so with all the jewels and plate he stole from individual owners, alas, though even that he couldn't entirely spirit away, there was so much of it. The slaves he left behind a poor lot, but their hatred of him has proven useful say that what is in his house here in Rome is minute compared to what he has hidden away on his estate near Cortona. I imagine that's where the brothers Metelli have gone, but I borrowed a tactic from my friend Caesar, who travels faster than anyone else I know. The court's expedition will reach Cortona first, I predict. So we may find more belonging to Sicily there." "Where has Gaius Verres gone?" asked Hiero, curious. "It seems he's heading for Massilia. A popular place for the art lovers among our exiles," said Cicero. "Well, we are delighted to have our national heritage back," said Hiero, beaming. "Thank you, Marcus Tullius, thank you!" "I believe it will be I who ends in thanking you that is," said Cicero delicately, "if you are pleased enough with my conduct of the case to honor our agreement about the grain next year? The Plebeian Games will not be held until November, so your price need not come from this year's harvest." We are happy to pay you, Marcus Tullius, and I promise you that your distribution of grain to the people of Rome will be magnificent." "And so," said Cicero later to his friend Titus Pomponius Atticus, "this rare venture into the realm of prosecution has turned out to be a bonus I badly needed. I'll buy my grain at two sesterces the modius, and sell it for three sesterces. The extra sestertius will more than pay for transportation." "Sell it for four sesterces the modius," said Atticus, "and pop a bit of money into your own purse. It needs fattening." But Cicero was shocked. "I couldn't do that, Atticus! The censors could say I had enriched myself by illegally taking fees for my services as an advocate." Atticus sighed. "Cicero, Cicero! You will never be rich, and it will be entirely your own fault. Though I suppose it's true that you can take the man out of Arpinum, but you can never take Arpinum out of the man. You think like a country squire!" "I think like an honest man," said Cicero, "and I'm very proud of that fact." "Thereby implying that I am not an honest man?" "No, no!" cried Cicero irritably. "You're a businessman of exalted rank and Roman station what rules apply to you are not the rules apply to me. I'm not a Caecilius, but you are!" Atticus changed the subject. Are you going to write the case against Verres up for publication?" he asked. "I had thought of doing so, yes." "Including the great speeches of an actio secunda that never happened? Did you compose anything ahead of time?" "Oh yes, I always have rough notes of my speeches months before their delivery dates. Though I shall modify the actio secunda speeches to incorporate a lot of the things I discussed during the actio prima. Titivated up, naturally." "Naturally," said Atticus gravely. "Why do you ask?" "I'm thinking of establishing a hobby for myself, Cicero. Business is boring, and the men I deal with even more boring than the business I do. So I'm opening a little shop with a big workshop out back on the Argiletum. Sosius will have some competition, because I intend to become a publisher. And if you don't object, I would like the exclusive right to publish all your future work. In return to you of a payment of one tenth of what I make on every copy of your works I sell." Cicero giggled. "How delicious! Done, Atticus, done!"
4
It was in April, shortly after the newly elected censors had confirmed Mamercus as Princeps Senatus, that Pompey announced he would celebrate votive victory games commencing in Sextilis and ending just before the ludi Romani were due to begin on the fourth day of September. His satisfaction in making this announcement was apparent to all, though not every scrap of it was due to the victory games themselves; Pompey had brought off a marital coup of enormous significance to a man from Picenum. His widowed sister, Pompeia, was to wed none other than the dead Dictator's nephew, Publius Sulla sive Sextus Perquitienus. Yes, the Pompeii of northern Picenum were rising up in the Roman world! His grandfather and father had had to make do with the Lucilii, whereas he had allied himself with the Mucii, the Licinii, and the Cornelii! Tremendously satisfying! But Crassus didn't care a scrap whom Pompey's sister chose as her second husband; what upset him was the victory games. "I tell you," Crassus said to Caesar, "he intends to keep the countryfolk spending up big in Rome for over two months, and right through the worst of summer! The shopkeepers are going to put up statues to him all over the city not to mention old grannies and daddies who love to take in lodgers during summer and earn a few extra sesterces!" "It's good for Rome. And good for money." "Yes, but where am I in all this?" asked Crassus, squeaking. "You'll just have to create a place for yourself." "Tell me how and when? Apollo's games last until the Ides of Quinctilis, then there are three sets of elections five days apart curule, People, Plebs. On the Ides of Quinctilis he intends to hold his wretched parade of the Public Horse. And after the plebeian elections there's an ocean of time for shopping but not enough time to go home to the country and come back again! until his victory games begin in the middle of Sextilis. They last for fifteen days! What conceit! And after they end it's straight into the Roman games! Ye gods, Caesar, his public entertainments are going to keep the bumpkins in town for closer to three months than two! And has my name been mentioned? No! I don't exist!" Caesar looked tranquil. "I have an idea," he said. What?'' demanded Crassus. Dress me up as Pollux?'' "And Pompeius as Castor? I like it! But let's be serious. Anything you do, my dear Marcus, is going to have to cost more than Pompeius is outlaying for his entertainments. Otherwise whatever you do won't eclipse him. Are you willing to spend a huge fortune?" "I'd be willing to pay almost anything to go out of office looking better than Pompeius!" Crassus snorted. "After all, I am the richest man in Rome have been for two years now." "Don't delude yourself," said Caesar. "You just talk about your wealth, and no one has come up with a bigger figure. But our Pompeius is a typical landed rural nobleman very closemouthed about what he's worth. And he's worth a lot more than you are, Marcus, so much I guarantee. When the Ager Gallicus was officially brought within the boundary of Italy, the price of it soared. He owns owns, not leases or rents! several million iugera of the best land in Italy, and not only in Umbria and Picenum. He inherited all that magnificent property the Lucilii used to own on the Gulf of Tarentum, and he came back from Africa in time to pick up some very nice river frontage on the Tiber, the Volturnus, the Liris and the Aternus. You are not the richest man in Rome, Crassus. I assure you that Pompeius is." Crassus was staring. "That's not possible!" "It is, you know. Just because a man doesn't shout to the world how much he's worth doesn't mean he's poor. You shout about your money to everyone because you started out poor. Pompeius has never been poor in his life and never will be poor. When he gives his land to his veterans he looks glamorous, but I'd be willing to bet that all he really gives them is tenure of it, not title to it. And that everyone pays him a tithe of what their land produces. Pompeius is a kind of king, Crassus! He didn't choose to call himself Magnus for no reason. His people regard him as their king. Now that he's senior consul, he just believes his kingdom has grown." "I'm worth ten thousand talents," said Crassus gruffly. "Two hundred and fifty million sesterces to an accountant," said Caesar, smiling and shaking his head. "Would you draw ten percent of that in annual profits?" "Oh, yes." "Then would you be willing to forgo this year's profits?" "You mean spend a thousand talents?" "I mean exactly that." The idea hurt; Crassus registered his pain visibly. "Yes if in so doing I can eclipse Pompeius. Not otherwise." "The day before the Ides of Sextilis which is four days before Pompeius's victory games begin is the feast of Hercules Invictus. As you remember, Sulla dedicated a tenth of his fortune to the god by giving a public feast on five thousand tables." "Who could forget that day? The black dog drank the first victim's blood. I'd never seen Sulla terrified before. Nor after, for that matter. His Grass Crown fell in the defiled blood." Forget the horrors, Marcus, for I promise you there will be no black dogs anywhere near when you dedicate a tenth of your fortune to Hercules Invictus! You'll give a public banquet on ten thousand tables!" said Caesar. "Those who might otherwise have preferred the comfort of a seaside holiday to watching one spectacle after another will all stay in Rome a free feast is top of everyone's priorities." Ten thousand tables? If I heaped every last one of them feet high in licker fish, oysters, freshwater eels and dug mullets by the cartload, it would still not cost me more than two hundred talents," said Crassus, who knew the price of everything. "And besides, a full belly today might make a man think he'll never be hungry again, but on the morrow that same man will be hungry. Feasts vanish in a day, Caesar. So does the memory of them." "Quite right. However," Caesar went on dreamily, "those two hundred talents leave eight hundred still to be spent. Let us presume that in Rome between Sextilis and November there will be about three hundred thousand Roman citizens. The normal grain dole provides each citizen with five modii that is, one medimnus of wheat per month, at a price of fifty sesterces. A cheap rate, but not as cheap as the actual price of the grain, of course. The Treasury makes at least a little profit, even in the lean years. This year, they tell me, will not be lean. Nor such is your luck! was last year a lean one. Because it is out of last year's crop you will have to buy." "Buy?" asked Crassus, looking lost. "Let me finish. Five modii of wheat for three months ... Times three hundred thousand people ... Is four and a half million modii. If you buy now instead of during summer, I imagine you could pick up four and a half million modii of wheat for five sesterces the modius. That is twenty two and a half million sesterces approximately eight hundred talents. And that, my dear Marcus," Caesar ended triumphantly, "is where the other eight hundred talents will go! Because, Marcus Crassus, you are going to distribute five modii of wheat per month for three months to every Roman citizen free of charge. Not at a reduced price, my dear Marcus. Free!" "Spectacular largesse," said Crassus, face expressionless. "I agree, it is. And it has one great advantage over every ploy Pompeius has devised. His entertainments will have finished over two months before your final issue of free grain. If memories are short, then you have to be the last man left on the field. Most of Rome will eat free bread thanks to Marcus Licinius Crassus between the month when the prices soar and the time when the new harvest brings them down again. You'll be a hero! And they'll love you forever!" "They might stop calling me an arsonist," grinned Crassus. "And there you have the difference between your wealth and Pompeius's," said Caesar, grinning too. "Pompeius's money doesn't float as cinders on Rome's air. It really is high time that you smartened up your public image!"
As Crassus chose to go about purchasing his vast quantity of wheat with stealth and personal anonymity and said not a word about intending to dedicate a tenth of his wealth to Hercules Invictus on the day before the Ides of Sextilis, Pompey proceeded with his own plans in sublime ignorance of the danger that he would find himself eclipsed. His intention was to make all of Rome and Italy aware that the bad times were over; and what better way to do that than to give the whole country over to feasting and holidaymaking? The consulship of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus would live in the memory of the people as a time of prosperity and freedom from anxiety no more wars, no more famines, no more internal strife. And though the element of self spoiled his intentions, they were genuine enough. The ordinary people, who were not important and therefore did not suffer during the proscriptions, spoke these days with wistful longing for the time when Sulla had been the Dictator; but after the consulship of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus was over, Sulla's reign would not loom so large in memory. At the beginning of Quinctilis Rome began to fill up with country people, most of whom were looking for lodgings until after the middle of September. Nor did as many as usual leave for the seashore, even among the upper classes. Aware that crime and disease would both be on the increase, Pompey devoted some of his splendid organizational talents to diminishing crime and disease by hiring ex gladiators to police the alleys and byways of the city, by making the College of Lictors keep an eye on the shysters and tricksters who frequented the Forum Romanum and other major marketplaces, by enlarging the swimming holes of the Trigarium, and plastering vacant walls with warning notices about good drinking water, urinating and defaecating anywhere but in the public latrines, clean hands and bad food. Unsure how many of these countryfolk understood how amazing it was that Rome's senior consul had been a knight at the time he was elected (and did not become a senator until he, was inaugurated on New Year's Day), Pompey had resolved to use the parade of the Public Horse to reinforce this fact. Thus had his tame censors Clodianus and Gellius revived the transvectio, as the parade was called, though it had not been held after the time of Gaius Gracchus. Until the consulship of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, who wanted to make a public splash with his Public Horse. It began at dawn on the Ides of Quinctilis in the Circus Flaminius on the Campus Martius, where the eighteen hundred holders of the Public Horse offered to Mars Invictus Undefeated Mars whose temple lay within the Circus. The offering made, the knights mounted their Public Horses and rode in solemn procession, century by century, through the gate in the vegetable markets, along the Velabrum into the Vicus Iugarius, and thence into the lower Forum Romanum. They turned to ride up the Forum to where, on a specially erected tribunal in front of the temple of Castor and Pollux, the censors sat to review them. Each man when he drew close to the tribunal was expected to dismount and lead his Public Horse up to the censors, who minutely inspected it and him. Did it or he not measure up to the ancient equestrian standards, then the censors were at liberty to strip the knight of his Public Horse and expel him from the eighteen original Centuries. It had been known to happen in the past; Cato the Censor had been famous for the stringency of his inspections. So novel was the transvectio that most of Rome tried to jam into the Forum Romanum to watch it, though many had to content themselves with seeing the parade pass by between the Circus Flaminius and the Forum. Every vantage point was solid with people roofs, plinths, porticoes, steps, hills, cliffs, trees. Vendors of food, fans, sunshades and drinks scrambled through the masses in the most precarious way crying their wares, banging people on the head with the corners of their neck slung open boxes, giving back as much abuse as they collected, each one with a slave in attendance to replenish the box or keep some sticky fingered member of the crowd from pilfering the goods or the proceeds. Toddlers were held out to piss on those below them, babies howled, children dived this way and that through the masses, gravy dribbled down tunics in a nice contrast to custard cascades, fights broke out, the susceptible fainted or vomited, and everybody ate nonstop. A typical Roman holiday. The knights rode in eighteen Centuries, each one preceded by its ancient emblem wolf, bear, mouse, bird, lion, and so on. Because of the narrowness of some parts of the route they could ride no more than four abreast, which meant that each Century held twenty five rows, and the whole procession stretched for nearly a mile. Each man was clad in his armor, some suits of incredible antiquity and therefore bizarre appearance; others (like Pompey's, whose family had nudged into the eighteen original Centuries and did not own ancient armor they would have cared to try to pass off as Etruscan or Latin) magnificent with gold and silver. But nothing rivaled the Public Horses, each a splendid example of horseflesh from the rosea rura, and mostly white or dappled grey. They were bedizened with every medallion and trinket imaginable, with ornate saddles and bridles of dyed leather, fabulous blankets, brilliant colors. Some horses had been trained to pick up their feet in high stepping prances, others had manes and tails braided with silver and gold. It was beautifully staged, and all to show off Pompey. To have examined every man who rode, no matter how rapid the censors were, was manifestly impossible; the parade would have taken thirty summer hours to ride past the tribunal. But Pompey's Century had been placed as one of the first, so that the censors solemnly went through the ritual of asking each of some three hundred men in turn what his name was, his tribe, his father's name, and whether he had served in his ten campaigns or for six years, after which his financial standing (previously established) was approved, and he led his horse off to obscurity. When the fourth Century's first row dismounted, Pompey was in its forefront; a hush fell over the Forum specially induced by Pompey's agents in the crowd. His golden armor flashing in the sun, the purple of his consular degree floating from his shoulders mixed with the scarlet of his general's degree, he led his big white horse forward trapped in scarlet leather and golden phalerae, his own person liberally bedewed with knight's brasses and medallions, and the scarlet plumes in his Attic helmet a twinkling mass of dyed egret's feathers. "Name?" asked Clodianus, who was the senior censor. "Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus!" hollered Pompey. "Tribe?" "Clustumina!" "Father?" "Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, consul!" "Have you served in your ten campaigns or for six years?" "Yes!" screamed Pompey at the top of his voice. "Two in the Italian War, one defending the city at the Siege of Rome, two with Lucius Cornelius Sulla in Italy, one in Sicily, one in Africa, one in Numidia, one defending Rome from Lepidus and Brutus, six in Spain, and one cleaning up the Spartacani! They are sixteen campaigns, and every one of them beyond cadet status took place under my own generalship!" The crowd went berserk, shouting, cheering, applauding, feet drumming, arms flailing; wave after wave of acclamation smote the stunned ears of the censors and the rest of the parade, setting horses plunging and some riders on the cobbles. When the noise finally died down it took some time to do so, because Pompey had walked out into the center of the open space in front of Castor's, his bridle looped over his arm, and turned in slow circles applauding the crowds the censors rolled up their screeds and sat regally nodding while the sixteen Centuries behind Pompey's rode past at a trot. "A splendid show!" snarled Crassus, whose Public Horse was the property of his elder boy, Publius, now twenty. He and Caesar had watched from the loggia of Crassus's house, this having originally belonged to Marcus Livius Drusus, and owning a superb view of the lower Forum. What a farce!" "But brilliantly staged, Crassus, brilliantly staged! You must hand Pompeius top marks for inventiveness and crowd appeal. His games should be even better." "Sixteen campaigns! And all beyond his cadetship he claims he generaled himself! Oh yes, for about a market interval after his daddy died at the Siege of Rome and during which he did nothing except ready his daddy's army to march back to Picenum and Sulla generaled him in Italy, so did Metellus Pius and Catulus was the general against Lepidus and Brutus and what do you think about that last claim, that he 'cleaned up the Spartacani'? Ye gods, Caesar, if we interpreted our own careers as loosely as he's interpreted his, we're all generals!" Console yourself with the fact that Catulus and Metellus Pius are probably saying much the same thing," said Caesar, who hurt too. "The man's a parvenu from an Italian backwater. '' "I hope my ploy with the free grain works!" "It will, Marcus Crassus, I promise you it will."
Pompey went home to his house on the Carinae exultant, but the mood didn't last. On the following morning Crassus's heralds began proclaiming the news that on the feast of Hercules Invictus, Marcus Licinius Crassus the consul would dedicate a tenth of everything he owned to the god, that there would be a public feast laid out on ten thousand tables, and that the bulk of the donation would be used up in giving every Roman citizen in Rome five free modii of wheat during September, October and November. "How dared he!" gasped Pompey to Philippus, who had come to compliment him upon his performance at the transvectio and to see how the Great Man would swallow Crassus's ploy. "It's very clever," said Philippus in an apologetic voice, especially because Romans are so quick at reckoning up how much anything costs. Games are too abstruse, but food is common knowledge. They know the price of everything from a licker fish to a salt sprat. Even when they can't afford the salt sprat, they'll ask its cost in the market. Human curiosity. They'll all know how much Crassus paid for his wheat too, not to mention how many modii he's had to buy. We'll be deafened by clicking abacuses." "What you're trying to say without actually saying it is that they'll conclude Crassus has spent more on them than I have!" said Pompey, a red glint in his blue eyes. "I am afraid so." "Then I'll have to set my agents to gossiping about how much games cost." Pompey glanced at Philippus from under his lids. "How much will Crassus lay out? Any idea?" "A thousand talents or thereabouts." "Crassus? A thousand talents?" "Easily." "He's too much the miser!" "Not this year, Magnus. Your generosity and showmanship have evidently stung our big ox into goring with both his horns." "What can I do?" "Very little except turn on absolutely wondrous games." "You're holding something back, Philippus." The fat jowls wobbled, the dark eyes flickered. Then he sighed, shrugged. "Oh well, better it comes from me than from one of your enemies. It's the free grain will win for Crassus." "What do you mean? Because he's filling empty bellies? There are no empty bellies in Rome this year!" "He'll distribute five modii of free grain to every Roman citizen in Rome during September, October and November. Count up! That's two one pound loaves a day for ninety days. And the vast majority of those ninety days will occur long after your entire gamut of entertainment is over. Everyone will have forgotten you and what you did. Whereas until the end of November, every Roman mouth taking a bite out of a loaf of bread will make an invocation of thanks to Marcus Licinius Crassus. He can't lose, Magnus!" said Philippus. It had been a long time since Pompey had last thrown a tantrum, but the one he threw for the sole edification of Lucius Marcius Philippus was one of his best. The hair came out in hanks, the cheeks and neck were raw with scratches, the body covered in bruises where he had dashed various parts of his anatomy against the floor or the walls. Tears ran like rain, he broke furniture and art into small pieces, his howls threatened to lift the roof. Mucia Tertia, hurrying to see what had happened, took one look and fled again. So did the servants. But Philippus sat in a fascinated appreciation until Varro arrived. "Oh, Jupiter!" whispered Varro. "Amazing, isn't it?" asked Philippus. "He's a lot quieter now. You ought to have seen him a few moments ago. Awesome!" "I've seen him before," said Varro, edging around the prone figure on the black and white marble tiles to join Philippus on his couch. "It's the news about Crassus, of course." "It is. When have you seen him like this?" "When he couldn't fit his elephants through the triumphal gate," said Varro, voice too low for the supine Pompey to hear; he was never sure how much of a Pompey tantrum was contrived, how much an actual travail which really did blot out conversation and action around him. Also when Carrinas slipped through his siege at Spoletium. He can't bear to be thwarted." "The ox gored with both horns," said Philippus pensively. "The ox," said Varro tartly, "has three horns these days, and the third is so feminine rumor has it! far the biggest." "Ah! It has a name, then." "Gaius Julius Caesar." Pompey sat up immediately, clothing shredded, scalp and face bleeding. "I heard that!" he said, answering Varro's unspoken debate about his tantrums. "What about Caesar?" "Only that he masterminded Crassus's campaign to win huge popularity," said Varro. Who told you?'' Pompey climbed lithely to his feet and accepted Philippus's handkerchief. "Palicanus." "He'd know, he was one of Caesar's tame tribunes," said Philippus, wincing as Pompey blew his nose productively. "Caesar's thick with Crassus, I know," said Pompey, tones muffled; he emerged from the handkerchief and tossed it to a revolted Philippus. "It was he did all the negotiating last year. And suggested that we restore the tribunate of the plebs." This was said with an ugly look at Philippus, who had not suggested it. "I have enormous respect for Caesar's ability," said Varro. "So does Crassus and so do I." Pompey still looked ugly. "Well, at least I know where Caesar's loyalties lie!" "Caesar's loyalties lie with Caesar," said Philippus, "and you should never forget that. But if you're wise, Magnus, you'll keep Caesar on a string despite his ties to Crassus. You'll never not need a Caesar, especially after I'm dead and that can't be far off. I'm too fat to see seventy. Lucullus fears Caesar, you know! Now that takes some doing. I can think of only one other man whom Lucullus feared. Sulla. You look at Caesar closely. Sulla!" "If you say I ought to keep him on a string, Philippus, then I will," said Pompey magnanimously. "But it will be a long time before I forget that he spoiled my year as consul!"
Between the end of Pompey's victory games (which were a great success, chiefly because Pompey's tastes in theater and circus were those of a common man) and the beginning of the ludi Romani, the Kalends of September intervened, and on the Kalends of September the Senate always held a meeting. It was always a significant session, and this year's session followed that tradition; Lucius Aurelius Cotta revealed his findings at it. "I have acquitted myself of the commission which you laid upon me early in the year, Conscript Fathers," Lucius Cotta said from the curule dais, I hope in a manner you will approve. Before I go into details, I will briefly outline what I intend to ask you to recommend into law." No scrolls or papers resided in his hands, nor did his urban praetor's clerk seem to have documents. As the day was exceedingly hot (it still being midsummer by the seasons), the House breathed a faint sigh of relief; he was not going to make it a long drawn meeting. But then, he was not a long drawn person; of the three Cottae, Lucius was the youngest and the brightest. "Candidly, my fellow members of this House," Lucius Cotta said in his clear, carrying voice, "I was not impressed by the record of either senators or knights in the matter of jury duty. When a jury is composed entirely of senators, it favors those of the senatorial order. And when a jury is composed of knights who own the Public Horse, it favors the equestrian order. Both kinds of jurors are susceptible to bribes, chiefly because, I believe, all a man's fellow jurors are of his own kind either senatorial or equestrian. "What I propose to do," he said, "is to divide jury duty up more equitably than ever before. Gaius Gracchus took juries off the Senate and gave them to the eighteen Centuries of the First Class who own a Public Horse and a census of at least four hundred thousand sesterces per annum in income. Now it is incontrovertible that with few exceptions every senator comes from a family within the ranks of the eighteen Centuries at the top end of the First Class. What I am saying is that Gaius Gracchus did not go far enough. Therefore I propose to make every jury a three way forum by having each jury composed of one third senators, one third knights of the Public Horse, and one third tribuni aerarii the knights who comprise the bulk of the First Class, and have a census of at least three hundred thousand sesterces per annum in income." A hum began, but not of outrage; the faces turned like flowers toward the sun of Lucius Cotta were astonished, but in a thoughtful way. Lucius Cotta grew persuasive. "It seems to me," he said, that we of the Senate grew sentimental over the years which elapsed between Gaius Gracchus and the dictatorship of Lucius Cornelius Sulla. We remembered with longing the privilege of jury duty without remembering the reality of jury duty. Three hundred of us to staff every jury, against fifteen hundred knights of the Public Horse. Then Sulla gave us back our beloved jury duty, and even though he enlarged the Senate to cope with this, we soon learned that each and every one of us resident in Rome was perpetually chained to some jury or other. Because, of course, the standing courts have greatly added to jury duty. Trial processes were far less numerous when most trial processes had to be individually enacted by an Assembly. I think Sulla had reasoned out that the smaller size of each jury and the greater size of the Senate itself would overcome the vexations of perpetual jury duty, but he underestimated the problem. "I entered upon my enquiry convinced of that one fact only that the Senate, even in its enlarged condition, is not a body numerous enough to provide juries for every trial. And yet, Conscript Fathers, I was loath to hand the courts back to the knights of the eighteen Public Horse Centuries. To do that, I felt, would have been a betrayal of two things my own senatorial order, and the truly excellent system of justice which Sulla gave us in his permanent standing courts." Everyone was leaning forward now, rapt: Lucius Cotta was speaking absolute sense! "At first, then, I thought of dividing jury duty equally between the Senate and the eighteen senior Centuries, with each jury composed of fifty percent senators and fifty percent knights. However, a few calculations showed me that the onus of duty for senators was still too heavy." Face very serious, eyes shining, both hands out, Lucius Cotta changed his thrust slightly. "If a man is to come to sit in judgement on his fellow man," he said quietly, "no matter what his rank or status might be, then he should come fresh, eager, interested. That is not possible when a man has to serve on too many juries. He grows jaded, skeptical, disinterested and more prone to accept bribes. For what other compensation, he might ask himself, can he obtain except a bribe? The State does not pay its jurors. Therefore the State ought not to have the right to suck up huge quantities of any man's time." There were nods and murmurs of approval; the House liked where Lucius Cotta was going very much. "I am aware that many of you were thinking along these lines, that jury duty ought to be given to a larger body of men than the Senate. I am aware, naturally, that for a short time once before the juries were divided between the two orders. But, as I have said already, none of the solutions which had occurred to us until now went far enough. If there are eighteen hundred minus the membership of the Senate in the eighteen senior Centuries, then the knight pool is reasonably wide, and one knight might perhaps sit on one jury in any year." Lucius Cotta paused, well satisfied with what his eyes saw. He went on more briskly. A man of the First Class, my fellow senators, is just that. A man of the First Class. A prominent citizen of means, with an income of no less than three hundred thousand sesterces per annum. Yet because Rome is now ancient, some things have not changed, or else have continued in the old way but with extra people or functions tacked on. Like the First Class. At the very beginning we had only the eighteen senior Centuries, but because we doggedly kept those eighteen Centuries to only one hundred men in each, we had to expand the First Class by tacking on more Centuries. When we got to seventy three extra Centuries tacked on, we decided to expand the First Class in a different way not by keeping on adding more Centuries, but by increasing the number of men in each Century beyond the old one hundred. So we ended up with what I might call a top light First Class! Just one thousand eight hundred men in the senior eighteen Centuries, and many thousands of men in the seventy three other Centuries. "So why not, I asked myself, offer public duty to these many, many thousands of men of the First Class who are not senior enough in family or name to belong to the eighteen Centuries of the Public Horse? If these more junior men were to form one third of each and every jury empaneled, the burden of duty for one man would be extremely light, yet a great incentive for the vast body of more junior knights we call the tribuni aerarii. Imagine if you will a jury of, say, fifty one men: seventeen senators, seventeen knights of the Public Horse, and seventeen tribuni aerarii. The seventeen senators have the clout of experience, legal knowledge and long association with jury duty. The seventeen knights of the Public Horse have the clout of distinguished family and great wealth. And the seventeen tribuni aerarii have the clout of freshness, a new and different experience, membership in the First Class of Roman citizens, and at least considerable wealth." Both the hands went out again; Lucius Cotta dropped the right one and extended the left toward the massive bronze doors of the Curia Hostilia. "That is my solution, Conscript Fathers! A tripartite jury of equal numbers of men from all three orders within the First Class. If you award me a senatus consultum, I will draft my measure in properly legal fashion and present it to the Assembly of the People." Pompey held the fasces for the month of September, and sat upon his curule chair at the front of the dais. Beside him was an empty chair that of Crassus. How says the senior consul elect?'' Pompey asked correctly of Quintus Hortensius. The senior consul elect commends Lucius Cotta for this splendid piece of work," said Hortensius. "Speaking as a curule magistrate elect and as an advocate in the courts, I applaud this eminently sensible solution to a vexed problem." "The junior consul elect?" asked Pompey. "I concur with my senior colleague," said Metellus Little Goat, who had no reason to oppose the measure now that the case of Gaius Verres was in the past and Verres himself vanished. And so it went through the ranks of those asked to speak; no one could find fault. There were some who were tempted to find fault, of course, but every time they thought of how much jury duty finding fault was likely to let them in for, they shuddered and ended in saying nothing.
"It really is splendid," said Cicero to Caesar as the exodus from the House drew them together. "We're both men who like to work with honest juries. How cunning Lucius Cotta was! Two segments of the jury would have to be bribed to secure the right verdict which is more expensive by far than half! and what one segment accepted, the other two would be inclined to deny. I predict, my dear Caesar, that while jury bribery may not entirely disappear, there will be considerably less of it. The tribuni aerarii will regard it as a matter of honor to behave decently and justify their incorporation. Yes indeed, Lucius Cotta has been very clever!" Caesar took great pleasure in reporting this to his uncle over dinner in his own triclinium. Neither Aurelia nor Cinnilla was present; Cinnilla was into her fourth month of pregnancy and suffering an almost constant sickness of the stomach, and Aurelia was caring for little Julia, who was also ailing in a minor way. So the two men were alone, and not ungrateful for it. "I admit that the bribery aspect did occur to me," said Lucius Cotta, smiling, "but I couldn't very well be blunt in the House when I wanted the measure approved." True. Nonetheless it has occurred to most, and as far as Cicero and I are concerned, it's a terrific bonus. On the other hand, Hortensius may well privately deplore it. Bribery aside, the best part about your solution is that it will preserve Sulla's standing courts, which I believe are the greatest advance in Roman justice since the establishment of trial and jury." "Oh, very nice praise, Caesar!" Lucius Cotta glowed for a moment, then put his wine cup on the table and frowned. "You're in Marcus Crassus's confidence, Caesar, so perhaps you can allay my fears. In many ways this has been a halcyon year no wars on the horizon we're not winning comfortably, the Treasury under less stress than it has been in a very long time, a proper census being taken of all the Roman citizens in Italy, a good harvest in Italy and the provinces, and something like a nice balance struck between old and new in government. If one leaves aside the unconstitutionality of Magnus's consulship, truly this year has been a good one. As I walked here through the Subura, I got a feeling that the ordinary Roman people the sort who rarely get to exercise a vote and find Crassus's free grain a genuine help in stretching their income are happier than they have been in at least a generation. I agree that they're not the ones who suffer when heads roll and the gutters of the Forum run with blood, but the mood that kind of thing engenders infects them too, even though their own heads are not in jeopardy." Pausing for breath, Lucius Cotta took a mouthful of wine. "I think I know what you're going to say, Uncle, but say it anyway," said Caesar. "It's been a wonderful summer, especially for the lowly. A host of entertainments, food enough to eat to bursting point and take home sackloads to feed every member of the family to bursting point, lion hunts and performing elephants, chariot races galore, every farce and mime known to the Roman stage and free wheat! Public Horses on parade. Peaceful elections held on time for once. Even a sensational trial wherein the villain got his just deserts and Hortensius a smack in the eye. Cleaned up swimming holes in the Trigarium. Not nearly as much disease as everyone expected, and no outbreak of the summer paralysis. Crimes and confidence tricks quite depressed!" Lucius Cotta smiled. "Whether they deserve it or not, Caesar, most of the credit and the praise! is going to the consuls. People's feelings about them are as romantic as they are fanciful. You and I, of course, know better. Though one cannot deny that they've been excellent consuls legislated only to save their necks, and for the rest, left well enough alone. And yet and yet there are rumors growing, Caesar. Rumors that all is not amicable between Pompeius and Crassus. That they're not speaking to each other. That when one is obliged to be present somewhere, the other will be absent. And I'm concerned, because I believe that the rumors are true and because I believe that we of the upper class owe the ordinary people one short little perfect year." "Yes, the rumors are true," said Caesar soberly. "Why?" "Chiefly because Marcus Crassus stole Pompeius's thunder and Pompeius cannot bear to be eclipsed. He thought that between the Public Horse farce and his votive games, he'd be everyone's hero. Then Crassus provided three months of free grain. And demonstrated to Pompeius that he's not the only man in Rome with an absolutely vast fortune. So Pompeius has retaliated by cutting Crassus out of his life, consular and private. He should, for instance, have notified Crassus that there was a meeting of the Senate today oh, everyone knows there's always a meeting on the Kalends of September, but the senior consul calls it, and must notify his juniors." "He notified me," said Lucius Cotta. "He notified everyone except Crassus. And Crassus interpreted that as a direct insult. So he wouldn't go. I tried to reason with him, but he refused to budge." "Oh, cacat!" cried Lucius Cotta, and flopped back on his couch in disgust. "Between the pair of them, they'll ruin what would otherwise be a year in a thousand!" "No," said Caesar, "they won't. I won't let them. But if I do manage to patch up a peace between them, it won't last long. So I'll wait until the end of the year, Uncle, and bring some Cottae into my schemes. At the end of the year we'll force them to stage some sort of public reconciliation that will bring tears to every eye. That way, it's exeunt omnes on the last day of the year with everybody singing their lungs out Plautus would be proud of the production." "You know," said Lucius Cotta thoughtfully, straightening up, "when you were a boy, Caesar, I had you in my catalogue of men as what Archimedes might have called a prime mover you know, 'Give me a place to stand, and I will shift the whole globe!' That was genuinely how I saw you, and one of the chief reasons why I mourned when you were made flamen Dialis. So when you managed to wriggle out of it, I put you back where I used to have you in my catalogue of men. But it hasn't turned out the way I thought it would. You move through the most complicated system of gears and cogs! For such a young man, you're very well known at many levels from the Senate to the Subura. But not as a prime mover. More in the fashion of a lord high chamberlain in an oriental court content to be the mind behind events, but allowing other men to enjoy the glory." He shook his head. "I find that so odd in you!" Caesar had listened to this with tight mouth and two spots of color burning in his normally ivory cheeks. "You didn't have me wrongly catalogued, Uncle," he said. "But I think perhaps my flaminate was the best thing could have happened to me, given that I did manage to wriggle out of it. It taught me to be subtle as well as powerful, it taught me to hide my light when showing it might have snuffed it out, it taught me that time is a more valuable ally than money or mentors, it taught me the patience my mother used to think I would never own and it taught me that nothing is wasted! I am still learning, Uncle. I hope I never stop! And Lucullus taught me that I could continue to learn by developing ideas and launching them through the agency of other men. I stand back and see what happens. Be at peace, Lucius Cotta. My time to stand forth as the greatest prime mover of them all will come. I will be consul in my year, even. But that will only be my beginning."
November was a cruel month, even though its weather was as fair and pleasant as any May when season and calendar coincided. Aunt Julia suddenly began to sicken with some obscure complaint none of the physicians including Lucius Tuccius could diagnose. It was a syndrome of loss weight, spirit, energy, interest. "I think she's tired, Caesar," said Aurelia. "But not tired of living, surely!" cried Caesar, who couldn't bear the thought of a world without Aunt Julia. "Oh yes," answered Aurelia. "That most of all." "She has so much to live for!" "No. Her husband and her son are dead, so she has nothing to live for. I've told you that before." And, wonder of wonders, the beautiful purple eyes filled with tears. "I half understand. My husband is dead. If you were to die, Caesar, that would be my end. I would have nothing to live for." "It would be a grief, certainly, but not an end, Mater," he said, unable to believe he meant that much to her. "You have grandchildren, you have two daughters." "That is true. Julia does not, however." The tears were dashed away. "But a woman's life is in her men, Caesar, not in the women she has borne or the children they bear. No woman truly esteems her lot, it is thankless and obscure. Men move and control the world, not women. So the intelligent woman lives her life through her men." He sensed a weakening in her, and struck. "Mater, just what did Sulla mean to you?" And, weakened, she answered. "He meant excitement and interest. He esteemed me in a way your father never did, though I never longed to be Sulla's wife. Or his mistress, for that matter. Your father was my true mate. Sulla was my dream. Not because of the greatness in him, but because of the agony. Of friends he had none who were his peers. Just the Greek actor who followed him into retirement, and me, a woman." The weakness left her, she looked brisk. "But enough of that! You may take me to see Julia." Julia looked and sounded a shadow of her old self, but sparked a little when she saw Caesar, who understood a little better what his mother had told him: the intelligent woman lived through men. Should that be? he wondered. Ought not women have more? But then he envisioned the Forum Romanum and the Curia Hostilia filled half with women, and shuddered. They were for pleasure, private company, service, and usefulness. Too bad if they wanted more! "Tell me a Forum story," said Julia, holding Caesar's hand. Her own hand, he noted, grew more and more to resemble a talon, and his nostrils, so attuned to that exquisite perfume she had always exuded, these days sensed a sourness in it, an underlying odor it could not quite disguise. Not exactly age. The word death occurred to him; he pushed it away and glued a smile to his face. Actually I do have a Forum story to tell you or rather, a basilica story," he said lightly. "A basilica? Which one?" "The first basilica, the Basilica Porcia which Cato the Censor built a hundred years ago. As you know, one end of its ground floor has always been the headquarters of the College of Tribunes of the Plebs. And perhaps because the tribunes of the plebs are once more enjoying their full powers, this year's lot decided to improve their lot. Right in the middle of their space is a huge column which makes it just about impossible for them to conduct a meeting of more than their ten selves. So Plautius, the head of the college, decided to get rid of the pillar. He called in our most distinguished firm of architects, and asked it if there was any possibility the column could be dispensed with. And after much measuring and calculating, he got his answer: yes, the column could be dispensed with and the building would remain standing comfortably." Julia lay on her couch with her body fitted around Caesar, sitting on its edge; her big grey eyes, sunk these days into bruised looking orbits, were fixed on his face. She was smiling, genuinely interested. "I cannot imagine where this story is going," she said, squeezing his hand. "Nor could the tribunes of the plebs! The builders brought in their scaffolds and shored the place up securely, the architects probed and tapped, everything was ready to demolish the pillar. When in walked a young man of twenty three they tell me he will be twenty four in December and announced that he forbade the removal of the pillar! " 'And who might you be?' asked Plautius. 'I am Marcus Porcius Cato, the great grandson of Cato the Censor, who built this basilica,' said the young man. " 'Good for you!' said Plautius. 'Now shift yourself out of the way before the pillar comes down on top of you!' "But he wouldn't shift, and nothing they could do or say would make him shift. He set up camp right there beneath the offending obstacle, and harangued them unmercifully while ever there was someone present to harangue. On and on and on, in a voice which, says Plautius and I agree with him, having heard it for myself could shear a bronze statue in half." Aurelia now looked as interested as Julia, and snorted. "What rubbish!" she said. "I hope they vetoed him!" They tried. He refused to accept the veto. He was a full member of the Plebs and his great grandfather built the place, they would disturb it over his dead body. I give him this he hung on like a dog to a rat! His reasons were endless, but mostly all revolved around the fact that his great grandfather had built the Basilica Porcia in a certain way, and that certain way was sacred, hallowed, a part of the mos maiorum.'' Julia chuckled. "Who won?" she asked. "Young Cato did, of course. The tribunes of the plebs just couldn't stand that voice anymore." "Didn't they try force? Couldn't they throw him off the Tarpeian Rock?" asked Aurelia, looking scandalized. "I think they would have loved to, but the trouble was that by the time they might have been driven to use force, word had got around, and so many people had gathered every day to watch the struggle that Plautius felt it would do the tribunes of the plebs more harm in the eyes of the populace to use real force than any good removal of the column might have brought them. Oh, they threw him out of the building a dozen times, but he just came back! And it became clear that he would never give up. So Plautius held a meeting and all ten members of the college agreed to suffer the continued presence of the pillar," said Caesar. What does this Cato look like?'' asked Julia. Caesar wrinkled his brow. "Difficult to describe. He's as ugly as he is pretty. Perhaps the closest description is to say that he reminds me of a highly bred horse trying to eat an apple through a latticework trellis." "All teeth and nose," said Julia instantly. "Exactly." "I can tell you another story about him," said Aurelia. "Go ahead!" said Caesar, noting Julia's interest. "It happened before young Cato turned twenty. He had always been madly in love with his cousin Aemilia Lepida Vlamercus's daughter. She was already engaged to Metellus Scipio when Metellus Scipio went out to Spain to serve with his father, but when he came back some years before his father, he and Aemilia Lepida fell out badly. She broke off the engagement and announced that she was going to marry Cato instead. Mamercus was furious! Especially, it seems, because my friend Servilia she's Cato's half sister had warned him about Cato and Aemilia Lepida. Anyway, it all turned out fine in the end, because Aemilia Lepida had no intention of marrying Cato. She just used him to make Metellus Scipio jealous. And when Metellus Scipio came to her and begged to be forgiven, Cato was out, Metellus Scipio was in again. Shortly afterward they were married. Cato, however, took his rejection so badly that he tried to kill both Metellus Scipio and Aemilia Lepida, and when that was frustrated, he tried to sue Metellus Scipio for alienating Aemilia Lepida's affections! His half brother Servilius Caepio a nice young man, just married to Hortensius's daughter persuaded Cato that he was making a fool of himself, and Cato desisted. Except, apparently, that for the next year he wrote endless poetry I am assured was all very bad." "It's funny," said Caesar, shoulders shaking. "It wasn't at the time, believe me! Whatever young Cato may turn out to be like later on, his career to date indicates that he will always have the ability to irritate people intensely," said Aurelia. "Mamercus and Cornelia Sulla not to mention Servilia! detest him. So these days, I believe, does Aemilia." "He's married to someone else now, isn't he?" asked Caesar. "Yes, to an Attilia. Not a terribly good match, but then, he doesn't have a great deal of money. His wife bore a little girl last year." And that, decided Caesar, studying his aunt, was as much diverting company as she could tolerate for the moment. "I don't want to believe it, but you're right, Mater. Aunt Julia is going to die," he said to Aurelia as soon as they left Julia's house. "Eventually, but not yet, my son. She'll last well into the new year, perhaps longer." "Oh, I hope she lasts until after I leave for Spain!" "Caesar! That's a coward's hope," said his remorseless mother. "You don't usually shirk unpleasant events." He stopped in the middle of the Alta Semita, both hands out and clenched into fists. "Oh, leave me alone!" he cried, so loudly that two passersby glanced at the handsome pair curiously. "It's always duty, duty, duty! Well, Mater, to be in Rome to bury Aunt Julia is one duty I don't want!" And only custom and courtesy kept him at his mother's side for the rest of that uncomfortable walk home; he would have given almost anything to have left her to find her own way back to the Subura. Home wasn't the happiest of places either. Now into her sixth month of pregnancy, Cinnilla wasn't very well. The "all day and all night sickness" as Caesar phrased it, trying to make a joke, had disappeared, only to be succeeded by a degree of swelling in the feet and legs which both distressed and alarmed the prospective mother. Who was obliged to spend most of her time in bed, feet and legs elevated. Not only was Cinnilla uncomfortable and afraid; she was cross too. An attitude of mind the whole household found difficult to cope with, as it did not belong in Cinnilla's nature. Thus it was that for the first time during his periods of residence in Rome, Caesar elected to spend his nights as well as his days elsewhere than the apartment in the Subura. To stay with Crassus was not possible; Crassus could only think of the cost of feeding an extra mouth, especially toward the end of the most expensive year of his life. And Gaius Matius had recently married, so the other ground floor apartment of Aurelia's insula (which would have been the most convenient place to stay) was also not available. Nor was he in the mood for dalliance; the affair with Caecilia Metella Little Goat had been abruptly terminated when Verres decamped to Massilia, and no one had yet appealed to him as a replacement. Truth to tell, the frail state of physical well being in both his aunt and his wife did not encourage dalliance. So he ended in renting a small four roomed apartment down the Vicus Patricius from his home, and spent most of his time there with Lucius Decumius for company. As the neighborhood was quite as unfashionable as his mother's insula, his political acquaintances would not have cared to visit him there, and the secretive side of him liked that anyway. The forethought in him also saw its possibilities when the mood for dalliance returned; he began to take an interest in the place (it was in a good building) and acquire a few nice pieces of furniture and art. Not to mention a good bed.
At the beginning of December he effected a most touching reconciliation. The two consuls were standing together on the rostra waiting for the urban praetor Lucius Cotta to convene the Assembly of the People; it was the day upon which Cotta's law reforming the jury system was to be ratified. Though Crassus held the fasces for December and was obliged to attend, Pompey was not about to permit a public occasion of such moment to pass without his presence. And as the consuls could not very well stand one to either end of the rostra without provoking much comment from the crowd, they stood together. In silence, admittedly, but at least in apparent amity. Along to attend the meeting came Caesar's first cousin, young Gaius Cotta, the son of the late consul Gaius Cotta. Though he was not yet a member of the Senate, nothing could have prevented his casting his vote in the tribes; the law belonged to his Uncle Lucius. But when he saw Pompey and Crassus looking more like a team than they had done in months, he cried out so loudly that the noise and movement around him stilled. Everyone looked his way. "Oh!" he cried again, more loudly still. "My dream! My dream has come true!" And he bounded onto the rostra so suddenly that Pompey and Crassus automatically stepped apart. Young Gaius Cotta planted himself between them, one arm around each, and gazed at the throng in the well of the Comitia with tears streaming down his face. "Quirites!" he shouted, "last night I had a dream! Jupiter Optimus Maximus spoke to me out of cloud and fire, soaked me and burned me! Far below where I stood I could see the two figures of our consuls, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Marcus Licinius Crassus. But they were not as I saw them today, standing together. Instead they stood one to the east and one to the west, stubbornly looking in opposite directions. And the voice of the Great God said to me out of the cloud and the fire, 'They must not leave their consular office disliking each other! They must leave as friends!' " An utter silence had fallen; a thousand faces looked up at the three men. Gaius Cotta let his arms fall from about the consuls and stepped forward, then turned to face them. "Gnaeus Pompeius, Marcus Licinius, will you not be friends?" the young man asked in a ringing voice. For a long moment no one moved. Pompey's expression was stern, so was Crassus's. "Come, shake hands! Be friends!" shouted Gaius Cotta. Neither consul moved. Then Crassus rotated toward Pompey and held out one massive hand. "I am delighted to yield first place to a man who was called Magnus before he so much as had a beard, and celebrated not one but two triumphs before he was a senator!" Crassus yelled. Pompey emitted a sound somewhere between a squeal and a yelp, grabbed at Crassus's paw and wrung both it and his forearm, face transfigured. They stepped toward each other and fell on each other's necks. And the crowd went wild. Soon the news of the reconciliation was speeding into the Velabrum, into the Subura, into the manufactories beyond the swamp of the Palus Ceroliae; people came running from everywhere to see if it was true that the consuls were friends again. For the rest of that day the two of them walked around Rome together, shaking hands, allowing themselves to be touched, accepting congratulations.
"There are triumphs, and then again, there are triumphs," said Caesar to his uncle Lucius and his cousin Gaius. 'Today was the better kind of triumph. I thank you for your help." "Was it hard to convince them that they had to do it?" asked the young Gaius Cotta. "Not really. If that pair understand nothing else, they always understand the importance of popularity. Neither of them is an adept at the art of compromise, but I split the credit equally between them, and that satisfied them. Crassus had to swallow his pride and say all those nauseating things about dear Pompeius. But on the other hand he reaped the accolades for being the one to hold out his hand first and make the concessions. So, as in the duel about pleasing the people, it was Crassus won. Luckily Pompeius doesn't see that. He thinks he won because he stood aloof and forced his colleague to admit his superiority." "Then you had better hope," said Lucius Cotta, "that Magnus doesn't find out who really won until after the year is over." "I'm afraid it disrupted your meeting, Uncle. You'll never keep a crowd still enough to vote now." "Tomorrow will do just as well." The two Cottae and Caesar left the Forum Romanum via the Vestal Stairs onto the Palatine, but halfway up Caesar stopped and turned to look back. There they were, Pompey and Crassus, surrounded by hordes of happy Romans. And happy themselves, the breach forgotten. "This year has been a watershed," said Caesar, beginning to ascend the rest of the steps. "All of us have crossed some kind of barrier. I have the oddest feeling that none of us will enjoy the same life again." "Yes, I know what you mean," said Lucius Cotta. "My stab at the history books happened this year, with my jury law. If I ever decide to run for consul, I suspect it will be an anticlimax." "I wasn't thinking along the lines of anticlimax," said Caesar, laughing. "What will Pompeius and Crassus do when the year is ended?" asked young Gaius Cotta. "They say neither of them wants to go out to govern a province." "That's true enough," said Lucius Cotta. "Both of them are returning to private life. Why not? They've each had great campaigns recently they're both so rich they don't need to stuff provincial profits in their purses and they crowned their dual consulship with laws to exonerate them from any suspicion of treason and laws to grant their veterans all the land they want. I wouldn't go to govern a province if I were in their boots!" "You'd find their boots more uncomfortable than they're worth," said Caesar. "Where can they go from here? Pompeius says he's returning to his beloved Picenum and will never darken the doors of the Senate again. And Crassus is absolutely driven to earn back the thousand talents he spent this year." He heaved a huge and happy sigh. "And I am going to Further Spain as its quaestor, under a governor I happen to like." "Pompeius's ex brother in law, Gaius Antistius Vetus," said young Cotta with a grin. Caesar didn't mention his most devout wish: that he leave for Spain before Aunt Julia died.