Colleen McCullough THE FIRST MAN IN ROME
THE FIRST YEAR (110 B.C)
IN THE CONSULSHIP OF MARCUS MINUCIUS RUFUS AND SPURIUS POSTUMIUS ALBINUS
Having no personal commitment to either of the new consuls, Gaius Julius Caesar and his sons simply tacked themselves onto the procession which started nearest to their own house, the procession of the senior consul, Marcus Minucius Rufus. Both consuls lived on the Palatine, but the house of the junior consul, Spurius Postumius Albinus, was in a more fashionable area. Rumor had it Albinus's debts were escalating dizzily, no surprise; such was the price of becoming consul. Not that Gaius Julius Caesar was worried about the heavy burden of debt incurred while ascending the political ladder; nor, it seemed likely, would his sons ever need to worry on that score. It was four hundred years since a Julius had sat in the consul's ivory curule chair, four hundred years since a Julius had been able to scrape up that kind of money. The Julian ancestry was so stellar, so august, that opportunities to fill the family coffers had passed the succeeding generations by, and as each century finished, the family of Julius had found itself ever poorer. Consul? Impossible! Praetor, next magistracy down the ladder from consul? Impossible! No, a safe and humble backbencher's niche in the Senate was the inheritance of a Julius these days, including that branch of the family called Caesar because of their luxuriantly thick hair. So the toga which Gaius Julius Caesar's body servant draped about- his left shoulder, wrapped about his frame, hung about his left arm, was the plain white toga of a man who had never aspired to the ivory curule chair of high office. Only his dark red shoes, his iron senator's ring, and the five-inch-wide purple stripe on the right shoulder of his tunic distinguished his garb from that of his sons, Sextus and Gaius, who wore ordinary shoes, their seal rings only, and a thin purple knight's stripe on their tunics. Even though dawn had not yet broken, there were little ceremonies to usher in the day. A short prayer and an offering of a salt cake at the shrine to the gods of the house in the atrium, and then, when the servant on door duty called out that he could see the torches coming down the hill, a reverence to Janus Patulcius, the god who permitted safe opening of a door. Father and sons passed out into the narrow cobbled alley, there to separate. While the two young men joined the ranks of the knights who preceded the new senior consul, Gaius Julius Caesar himself waited until Marcus Minucius Rufus passed by with his lictors, then slid in among the ranks of the senators who followed him.
It was Marcia who murmured a reverence to Janus Clusivius, the god who presided over the closing of a door, Marcia who dismissed the yawning servants to other duties. The men gone, she could see to her own little expedition. Where were the girls? A laugh gave her the answer, coming from the cramped little sitting room the girls called their own; and there they sat, her daughters, the two Julias, breakfasting on bread thinly smeared with honey. How lovely they were! It had always been said that every Julia ever born was a treasure, for the Julias had the rare and fortunate gift of making their men happy. And these two young Julias bade fair to keep up the family tradition. Julia Major called Julia was almost eighteen. Tall and possessed of grave dignity, she had pale, bronzy-tawny hair pulled back into a bun on the nape of her neck, and her wide grey eyes surveyed her world seriously, yet placidly. A restful and intellectual Julia, this one. Julia Minor called Julilla was half past sixteen. The last child of her parents' marriage, she hadn't really been a welcome addition until she became old enough to enchant her softhearted mother and father as well as her three older siblings. She was honey-colored. Skin, hair, eyes, each a mellow gradation of amber. Of course it had been Julilla who laughed. Julilla laughed at everything. A restless and unintellectual Julia, this one. "Ready, girls?" asked their mother. They crammed the rest of their sticky bread into their mouths, wiggled their fingers daintily through a bowl of water and then a cloth, and followed Marcia out of the room. "It's chilly," said their mother, plucking warm woolen cloaks from the arms of a servant. Stodgy, unglamorous cloaks. Both girls looked disappointed, but knew better than to protest; they endured being wrapped up like caterpillars into cocoons, only their faces showing amid fawn folds of homespun. Identically swaddled herself, Marcia formed up her little convoy of daughters and servant escort, and led it through the door into the street. They had lived in this modest house on the lower Germalus of the Palatine since Father Sextus had bestowed it upon his younger son, Gaius, together with five hundred iugera of good land between Bovillae and Aricia a sufficient endowment to ensure that Gaius and his family would have the wherewithal to maintain a seat in the Senate. But not, alas, the wherewithal to climb the rungs of the cursus honorum, the ladder of honor leading up to the praetorship and consulship. Father Sextus had had two sons and not been able to bear parting with one; a rather selfish decision, since it meant his property already dwindled because he too had had a sentimental sire and a younger brother who also had to be provided for was of necessity split between Sextus, his elder son, and Gaius, his younger son. It had meant that neither of his sons could attempt the cursus honorum, be praetor and consul. Brother Sextus had not been as sentimental as Father Sextus; just as well! He and his wife, Popillia, had produced three sons, an intolerable burden for a senatorial family. So he had summoned up the necessary steel to part with his eldest boy, given him up for adoption to the childless Quintus Lutatius Catulus, thereby making a fortune for himself as well as ensuring that his eldest son would come into a fortune. Old Catulus the adopter was fabulously wealthy, and very pleased to pay over a huge sum for the chance to adopt a boy of patrician stock, great good looks, and a reasonable brain. The money the boy had brought Brother Sextus his real father had been carefully invested in land and in city property, and hopefully would produce sufficient income to allow both of Brother Sextus's younger sons a chance at the senior magistracies. Strong-minded Brother Sextus aside, the whole trouble with the Julius Caesars was their tendency to breed more than one son, and then turn sentimental about the predicament more than one son embroiled them in; they were never able to rule their hearts, give up some of their too-profuse male offspring for adoption, and see that the children they kept married into lots of money. For this reason had their once-vast landholdings shrunk with the passing of the centuries, progressively split into smaller and smaller parcels to provide for two and three sons, and some of it sold to provide dowries for daughters. Marcia's husband was just such a Julius Caesar a sentimentally doting parent, too proud of his sons and too enslaved by his daughters to be properly, Romanly sensible. The older boy should have been adopted out and both girls should have been promised in marriage to rich men years ago; the younger son should also have been contracted to a rich bride. Only money made a high political career possible. Patrician blood had long become a liability.
It was not a very auspicious sort of New Year's Day. Cold, windy, blowing a fine mist of rain that slicked the cobbles dangerously and intensified the stale stench of an old burning in the air. Dawn had come, late because sunless, and this was one Roman holiday the ordinary people would prefer to spend in a cramped confinement indoors, lying on their straw pallets playing the ageless game they called Hide the Sausage. Had the weather been fine, the streets would have been thronged with people from all walks of life going to a favorite vantage point from which to view the pomp in the Forum Romanum and on the Capitol; as it was, Marcia and her daughters found it easy walking, their servant escort not needing to use brute force in making a way for the ladies. The tiny alley in which the house of Gaius Julius Caesar lay opened onto the Clivus Victoriae not far above the Porta Romulana, the ancient gate in the ancient Palatine city's walls, vast blocks of stone laid down by Romulus himself, now overgrown or built upon or carved up with the graffitic initials of six hundred years of tourists. Turning right to ascend the Clivus Victoriae toward the corner where the Palatine Germalus looked down upon the Forum Romanum, the ladies reached their destination five minutes later, a piece of vacant land occupying the best spot of all. Twelve years earlier one of the finest houses in Rome had stood there. Nowadays the site bore little evidence of its previous dwelling, just an occasional stone half-buried in grass. The view was splendid; from where the servants set up campstools for Marcia and the two Julias, the women had an unobstructed vista before them of Forum Romanum and Capitol, with the seething declivity of the Subura adding definition to the northern hills of the city's horizon. "Did you hear?" asked that Caecilia who was the wife of the merchant banker Titus Pomponius. Very pregnant, she was sitting nearby with her Aunt Pilia; they lived next but one down the street from the Caesars. "No, what?" asked Marcia, leaning forward. "The consuls and priests and augurs started just after midnight, to make sure they'd finish the prayers and rites in time " "They always do that!" said Marcia, interrupting. "If they make a mistake, they have to start all over again." "I know, I know, I'm not that ignorant!" said Caecilia tartly, annoyed because she knew she was being put in her place by a praetor's daughter. "The thing is, they didn't make a mistake! The auspices were bad. Lightning four times on the right, and an owl inside the augural place screeching as if being murdered. And now the weather it's not going to be a good year, or a good pair of consuls.'' "Well, I could have told you that without benefit of owls or lightning," said Marcia, whose father had not lived to be consul, but as praetor urbanus had built the great aqueduct which brought sweet fresh water into Rome, and kept his memory green as one of the all-time greats in government. "A miserable assortment of candidates to begin with, and even then the electors couldn't pick the best of such a shabby lot. I daresay Marcus Minucius Rufus will try, but Spurius Postumius Albinus! They've always been inadequate." "Who?" asked Caecilia, who wasn't very bright. "The Postumius Albinus clan," said Marcia, her eyes darting to her daughters to make sure they were all right; they had spotted four girls belonging to two of the Claudius Pulchers such a tribe of them, it was never possible to keep them all straight! And they usually weren't straight. But these girls gathered on the site of the Flaccus house had all gone to school together as children, and it was impossible to erect social barriers against a caste almost as aristocratic as the Julius Caesars. Especially when the Claudius Pulchers also perpetually battled the enemies of the old nobility, too many children allied to dwindling land and money. Now her two Julias had moved their campstools down to where the other girls sat unsupervised where were their mothers? Oh. Talking to Sulla. Shady! That settled it. "Girls!" Marcia called sharply. Two draped heads turned to look at her. "Come back here," she said, and added, "at once." They came. "Mama, please can't we stay with our friends?" asked young Julilla, eyes pleading. "No," said Marcia, in the tone which indicated That Was That. Down below in the Forum Romanum the procession was forming, as the long crocodile which had wended its way from the house of Marcus Minucius Rufus met up with the equally long crocodile originating at the house of Spurius Postumius Albinus. The knights came first, not as many as on a fine sunny New Year's Day, but a respectable enough gathering of seven hundred or so; as the light improved but the rain grew a trifle harder, they moved off up the slope of the Clivus Capitolinus to where, at the first bend in this short and hilly track, the priests and slaughtermen waited with two flawless white bulls on spangled halters, their horns gilded and their dewlaps garlanded. At the rear of the knights strolled the twenty-four lictors of the new consuls. After the lictors came the consuls themselves, and after them the Senate, those who had held senior magistracies in purple-bordered togas, the rest of the House in plain white togas. And last of all came those who did not by rights belong there, sightseers and a host of the consuls' clients. Nice, thought Marcia. Perhaps a thousand men walked slowly up the ramp toward the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the Great God of Rome, rearing its impressive bulk in highest place of all on the more southerly of the two hills constituting the Capitol. The Greeks built their temples on the ground, but the Romans built theirs on lofty platforms with many steps, and the steps which led up to Jupiter Optimus Maximus were indeed many. Nice, thought Marcia again as the sacrificial animals and their escort joined the procession, and all went on together until at last they clustered as best they could in the restricted space before the great temple on high. Somewhere among them were her husband and her two sons, a part of the governing class of this mightiest of all cities of the world.
1
Somewhere among them too was Gaius Marius. As an ex-praetor, he wore the purple-bordered toga praetexta, and on his dark red senatorial shoes he wore the crescent-shaped buckle his praetorship permitted. Yet it wasn't enough. He had been a praetor five years earlier, should have been consul three years ago. But he knew now that he would never be allowed to run for the consulship. Never. Why? Because he wasn't good enough. That was the only reason why. Who had ever heard of a family called Marius? No one.
Gaius Marius was an upstart from the rural nowhere, a Military Man, someone who was said to have no Greek, and who still could be trapped by excitement or anger into putting upcountry inflections on his native Latin. It didn't matter that he could buy and sell half the Senate; it didn't matter that on a battlefield he could outgeneral both halves of the Senate. What did matter was blood. And his just wasn't good enough. Gaius Marius hailed from Arpinum not so many miles away from Rome really, but dangerously close to the border between Latium and Samnium, and therefore a trifle suspect in its loyalties and leanings; the Samnites were still Rome's most obdurate enemies among the Italians. Full Roman citizenship had come late to Arpinum only seventy-eight years ago and the district still did not enjoy proper municipal status. Ah, but it was so beautiful! Huddled in the foothills of the high Apennines, a fruitful valley cupping both the Liris and the Melfa rivers, where the grape grew with wonderful results for table as well as vintage, where the crops returned a hundred-and-fifty-fold, and the sheep were fat and the wool surprisingly fine. Peaceful. Green. Sleepy. Cooler than expected in summer, warmer than expected in winter. The water in both rivers was full of fish; the dense forests on the mountains ringing Arpinum's bowl around still yielded superb timber for ships and buildings. And there were pitch pines and torch pines, oaks to litter the ground with acorns for the pigs in autumn, fat hams and sausages and bacon fit to grace any noble table in Rome which they often did. Gaius Marius's family had been in Arpinum for centuries, prided itself upon its Latinity. Was Marius a Volscian name, a Samnite name? Did it have an Oscan ring to it, just because there were Samnites and Volsci called Marius? No! Marius was Latin. He, Gaius Marius, was as good as any of those lofty-nosed, haughty nobles who so delighted in putting him down. In fact and this was what really hurt! he was much better than any of them. His feeling told him so. How could a man explain away a feeling? A feeling he hosted like a guest who refused to leave, no matter how inhospitably he behaved? It was a long, long time since that feeling had first moved inside his mind, time enough and more for the events of the ensuing years to have shown it its futility, prod it into moving out in despair. Yet it never had. It lived inside his mind today as vividly and indomitably as it had in the beginning, fully half a lifetime ago.
How strange the world was! thought Gaius Marius, looking closely into the glazed faces of the men wearing purple-bordered togas all around him in that dreary, mizzling hour after dawn. No, not a Tiberius or a Gaius Sempronius Gracchus among them! Pluck out Marcus Aemilius Scaurus and Publius Rutilius Rufus, and you were left with a gaggle of very little men. Yet all of them looked down on him Gaius Marius as a bumptious nobody with more gall than grace. Simply because they had the right blood in their veins. Any one of them knew if the right circumstances came into being, he might be entitled to call himself the First Man in Rome. Just as Scipio Africanus, Aemilius Paullus, Scipio Aemilianus, and perhaps a dozen others over the centuries of the Republic had been so called. The First Man in Rome was not the best man; he was the first among other men who were his equals in rank and opportunity. And to be the First Man in Rome was something far better than kingship, autocracy, despotism, call it what you would. The First Man in Rome held on to that title by sheer pre-eminence, perpetually aware that his world was stuffed with others eager to supplant him others who could supplant him, legally and bloodlessly, by producing a superior brand of pre-eminence. To be the First Man in Rome was more than being consul; consuls came and went at the rate of two a year. Where as the centuries of the Roman Republic passed, only the smallest handful of men would come to be hailed as the First Man in Rome. At the moment Rome had no First Man; indeed, there had been no First Man since the death of Scipio Aemilianus nineteen years before. Marcus Aemilius Scaurus undoubtedly came closest, but he didn't have quite enough power auctoritas they called it, a blend of power, authority, and fame peculiar to Rome to merit the title, nor was the title applied to him. Save by himself!
There was a sudden reflexive stir and murmur among the crowd of senators; the senior consul, Marcus Minucius Rufus, was about to offer his white bull to the Great God, only it wasn't behaving itself, must have had the prescience to avoid its last manger of drugged fodder. Not a good year, everyone was saying it already. Poor omens during the night watch of the consuls, a miserable day, and now the first of the two victims was snorting and plunging, had half a dozen sacerdotal underlings hanging on to his horns and ears silly fools, they should have put a ring through his nose as a precaution. Stripped to the waist like the other attendants, the acolyte carrying the stunning hammer didn't wait for the raising of the head toward the sky, followed by the dipping of the head toward the earth; it could always be argued successfully later that the beast had lifted and lowered its head dozens of times during its fight to survive. He stepped in and swung his iron weapon up and down so quickly its shape was a blur. The dull crack of the blow was followed immediately by another, the noise of the bull's knees hitting the stone paving as it came down, all sixteen hundred pounds of it. Then the half-naked axeman brought his double-bladed instrument down into the neck and the blood was pouring everywhere, some of it caught in the sacrificial cups, most of it a steaming sticky river coursing off to nowhere, melting and thinning amid the rain-soaked ground. You could tell much about a man from how he reacted to the shedding of blood, thought Gaius Marius, clinically remote, a half smile curling the corners of his full mouth as he saw this one step hastily aside, that one indifferent to the fact his left shoe was filling up, another trying to pretend he wasn't on the verge of puking. Ahhhhhh! There was the man to watch! The young yet fully mature fellow on the outskirts of the knights, togate, yet minus even a knight's stripe on the right shoulder of his tunic; he hadn't been there long, and now he moved off again down the slope of the Clivus Capitolinus toward the Forum. But not before Gaius Marius had seen his extraordinary grey-white eyes glisten, flare, drink up the sight of the blood redly, greedily. Positive he had never seen the fellow before, Gaius Marius wondered who he was; not a nobody, certainly. The kind of looks called epicene, a beauty as much feminine as masculine, and such amazing coloring! Skin as white as milk, hair like the rising sun. Apollo incarnate. Was that who he had been? No. The god never existed with eyes like the mortal man who had just left; his were the eyes of someone who suffered, and there was no point in being a god if you had to suffer, was there? Though the second bull was better drugged, it fought too, even harder. This time the hammerman didn't manage to strike true the first time, and the poor maddened creature turned in blind rage to charge. Then some thinking fellow grabbed the swaying bag of its scrotum, and in the single frozen instant his action afforded the slaughtermen, the hammerman and the axeman swung together. Down went the bull, spraying everyone within two dozen paces with blood, including both the consuls: Spurius Postumius Albinus was saturated; so was his younger brother, Aulus, standing just behind and to one side of him. Gaius Marius eyed them askance, wondering if the omen was what he thought it was. Bad news for Rome, anyway. And still his unwelcome guest, the feeling, refused to go away; in fact, of late it had greatly increased in strength. As if the moment approached. The moment in which he, Gaius Marius, would become the First Man in Rome. Every particle of common sense in him and there were many screamed that his feeling was a traitor, a trap which would betray him and lead to ignominy and death. Yet he went on experiencing it, the ineradicable feeling that he would become the First Man in Rome. Ridiculous! argued the man of eminent good sense: he was forty-seven years old, he had limped in sixth and last among the six men elected as praetors five years ago, he was too old now to seek the consulship without benefit of name and a host of clients. His time had gone. Gone, gone, gone. The consuls were finally being inaugurated; that pompous ass Lucius Caecilius Metellus Dalmaticus who rejoiced in the title of Pontifex Maximus was rattling off the concluding prayers, and soon the senior consul, Minucius Rufus, would have the herald call the Senate to meet inside the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. There they would fix the date of the Latin Festival on the Alban Mount; discuss which of the provinces must receive new governors, and which prorogued governors; draw the lots apportioning the provinces, for the praetors as well as the consuls; some self-serving tribune of the plebs would start raving on about the People; Scaurus would squash the presumptuous fool like a beetle underfoot; and one of the many Caecilius Metelluses would drone interminably about the decline in the moral and ethical standards of Rome's younger generation, until dozens of voices from all around him told him to shut up and pull his head in. Same old Senate same old People same old Rome same old Gaius Marius. Now forty-seven years old. Next year he'd be fifty-seven, the year after that sixty-seven, and then they'd shove him into the middle of a pyre of logs and kindling, and up he'd go in a puff of smoke. Goodbye, Gaius Marius, you upstart from the pigpens of Arpinum, you non-Roman. Sure enough, the herald brayed his summons. Sighing, Gaius Marius began to move, lifting his head to see if there was anyone within footshot he could tread on heavily and feel good about doing so. No one. Of course. At which moment his eye caught the eye of Gaius Julius Caesar, who was smiling as if he knew exactly what Gaius Marius was thinking. Arrested, Gaius Marius gazed back. Only a backbencher, but never mere lobby fodder, this most senior of the Julius Caesars left in the Senate now his older brother, Sextus, was dead. Tall, as erect as if he were a Military Man, wide in the shoulders still, his fine head of silver-gilt hair a fitting crown for his lined, handsome face. He wasn't young, had to be upward of fifty-five years old, but he looked as if he was going to become one of those desiccated ancients the patrician nobility produced with monotonous regularity, tottering off to every meeting of Senate or People at ninety-plus, and continuing to speak praiseworthy good sense. The sort you couldn't kill with a sacrificial axe. The sort who when it was all boiled down made Rome what Rome was, in spite of the plethora of Caecilius Metelluses. Better than the rest of the world put together. "Which Metellus is going to harangue us today?" asked Caesar as they fell in beside each other and began to ascend the many steps of the temple. "One still to earn his extra name," said Gaius Marius, his gigantic eyebrows leaping up and down like millipedes on pins. "Quintus Caecilius plain old Metellus, younger brother of our revered Pontifex Maximus." "Why him?" "Because he's going to run for consul next year, I think. So he's got to start making noises of the right kind now," said Gaius Marius, standing aside to permit the older man to precede him into the earthly dwelling place of the Great God, Jupiter Optimus Maximus Jupiter Best and Greatest. "I do believe you are correct," said Caesar. The vast central room of the temple was reduced to semi-darkness, so poor was the light outside, but the brick-red face of the Great God glowed as if illuminated from within. He was very old, made centuries before by the famous Etruscan sculptor Vulca out of terracotta, though gradually he had been gifted with an ivory robe, gold hair, gold sandals, gold thunderbolt, even silver skin on his arms and legs, and ivory nails on his fingers and toes. Only his face remained the color of that richly ruddy clay, clean-shaven in the Etruscan fashion Rome had inherited; his brainless shut-mouthed smile curved his lips up almost to his ears, and gave him the air of a fatuous parent determined to ignore the fact that his child was busy setting fire to the nursemaid. On each side of the Great God's room opened another room, the left-hand one to house his daughter Minerva, the right-hand one to house his wife, Juno. Each lady had a wonderful statue of herself in gold and ivory within her cella, and each lady bore with resignation the presence of an uninvited guest, for when the temple was built two of the old gods refused to move out; Romans being Romans, they simply left the old gods there alongside the new. "I wonder, Gaius Marius," said Caesar, "if you would care to share my dinner tomorrow afternoon?" That was surprising! Gaius Marius blinked, using the fraction of time the action brought him to arrive at a conclusion. After something, was he? Undoubtedly. But it wouldn't be shoddy. And one thing no one could say about the Julius Caesars, that they were snobs. A Julius Caesar didn't need to be a snob. If you could trace your lineage straight back in the male line to Iulus, Aeneas, Anchises, and the goddess Venus, you were secure enough to find it no comedown to mix with anyone from a dockside worker to a Caecilius Metellus. "Thank you, Gaius Julius," said Marius. "I would be very pleased to share your dinner."
2
Lucius Cornelius Sulla woke up before dawn on New Year's Day almost sober. He was lying exactly where he ought to be, he discovered, with his stepmother on his right side and his mistress on his left, but each lady if one could be euphemistic enough so to call them was turned with her back toward him, and fully clothed. This told him he had not been called upon to perform, a deduction reinforced by the fact that what had awakened him was a huge and exquisitely painful erection. For a moment he lay trying to stare his third eye looking straight up his belly at him out of its shameless countenance, but as usual he lost the unequal contest. Only one thing to do, gratify the ingrate. With this in mind, he put his right hand out and turned up the hem of his stepmother's robe, his left hand engaged upon the same business with his mistress. Whereupon both women, shamming sleep, reared up in the bed and began to belabor him with fists and tongues, drumming and drubbing unmercifully. "What did I do?" he yelped, curling himself up into a defensive ball and shielding his groin, where his princely erection had collapsed like an empty wineskin. They were only too eager to tell him both at once. However, he was now remembering the reason for himself; just as well, for the two of them shrieking together made their explanation unintelligible. Metrobius, curse his eyes! Oh, but what eyes! Liquid-dark as polished jet, fringed with black lashes so long they could be curled around a finger. Skin like thick cream, black curls straying around his slender shoulders, and the sweetest arse in the world. Fourteen years old in time, a thousand years old in vice, the apprentice of old Scylax the actor and a tease, a torment, a trollop, a tiger cub. On the whole Sulla preferred women these days, but Metrobius was a case apart. The boy had come with Scylax to the party, dressed as Cupid to Scylax's raddled Venus, a ridiculous pair of little feathered wings strapped to his back and the tiniest skirt of Coan floss silk about his waist, dyed with some cheap imitation saffron that had run a little because the room was closely shuttered and stuffily hot, leaving orange-yellow stains down the insides of his thighs that served only to draw attention to what was hidden, but barely. From that first glance he had fascinated Sulla, and Sulla had fascinated him. Well, how many men in the world besides Sulla had skin as white as snow and hair the color of the rising sun and eyes so pale they were almost white? Not to mention a face which had started a stampede in Athens a few years back, when an Aemilius who shall remain nameless had smuggled the penniless sixteen-year-old Sulla across on the packet to Patrae, and enjoyed his favors all the way from Patrae to Athens by the most prolonged route possible, right around the coast of the Peloponnese. In Athens Sulla had been summarily dumped; the Aemilius was too important to have any slur attached to his masculinity. The Roman despised homosexuality; the Greek considered it the highest form of love. So what the one hid in fear and dread, the other flaunted before the eyes of his dazzled peers. As far as Sulla was concerned, however, the one soon turned out to be no better than the other, for there was absolutely no doubt that fear and dread added an element of spice and a great deal more largesse. The Greeks, as he quickly learned, were loath to pay for what was readily available free of charge, even when the prize was as unusual as a Sulla. So he had blackmailed the Aemilius for a first-class fare back to Italy and Rome, and quit Athens forever. Of course manhood had changed all that. Once his beard grew in sufficiently for him to have to shave daily, and he sprouted a chest of red-gold hair, his appeal to men faded and the largesse along with it. Women, he discovered, were bigger fools and had a hankering to settle down which made them exploitable. As a child he had never really known many women, for his mother had died before he was old enough to form a memory of her he could cherish, and his father, an impoverished drunkard, cared little for either of his progeny. Sulla had a sister, Cornelia Sulla, two years older than he was; equally spectacular in looks, she had seized a chance of marriage with a very rich rustic from Picenum named Lucius Nonius, and gone north with him to enjoy whatever luxuries life in Picenum might hold. That left the sixteen-year-old Sulla to look after his father unaided, which affected the quality of their lives chiefly on the level of cleanliness. Then when Sulla turned twenty-four, his father remarried. It was not the social event of the year, but it did bring a measure of relief to the young man, who had been used for years to having to find sufficient money to underwrite his father's bottomless thirst. For his father's new wife (by name Clitumna, by birth an Umbrian peasant) was the relict of a very rich merchant, and had managed to inherit all her dead husband's property by dint of destroying his will and packing his only child off to Calabria as the wife of an oil vendor. Just what Clitumna saw in the decayed Sulla Senior at first was beyond his son; then Clitumna invited his son to share her commodious house on the Germalus of the Palatine, and promptly hopped out of her new husband's bed and into young Sulla's. Somewhere, he discovered at that moment, there did burn in him a small spark of loyalty and affection for his importunate parent, for he foisted Clitumna off as tactfully as possible and immediately moved out. He had managed to save a very little, and found two rooms in a huge insula on the Esquiline near the Agger for a rent he could just afford: three thousand sesterces a year. This gave him a room for himself and another for his servant to sleep and cook in, plus the laundry labor of a girl who lived two floors higher up in the crumbling tenement and did for various tenants in all sorts of ways. Once a week she took his dirty clothing down the alley to where a crossroads widened the maze of streets into a tiny, irregular, square; in it were a shrine of the crossroads, a clubhouse where the crossroads sodality met, and a fountain spewing a continuous trickle of water out of the mouth of an ugly old Silanus into a stone-bottomed pool donated to the city one of many by that grand old man of history, Cato the Censor, a man as practical as he had been lowborn. Fighting for elbow room, she pounded Sulla's tunics on the stones, borrowed the assistance of another washerwoman to wring every garment bone-dry (having performed the same service for her fellow), and then brought him back his laundry neatly folded. Her price was simple; a quick in-and-out and none the wiser, especially the sour old bird she lived with. At which point he met Nicopolis. Victory City, her name meant in her native Greek. She was certainly that to him, for she was a widow, comfortably off, and in love with him to the point of madness. The only trouble was that while she was happy to support him in lavish fashion, she was far too shrewd to give him an allowance. The twin, he recognized gloomily, of his stepmother, Clitumna. Women were fools, but they were clever fools. Either that, or he was far too transparent. Two years after he had moved out of Clitumna's splendid house, his father died, having guzzled himself with unalloyed happiness into terminal liver disease; and if he had been the price Clitumna was prepared to pay in order to catch his son, then her ruse worked at last, especially after Sulla discovered that Clitumna was not at all averse to sharing his favors and her bed with Nicopolis the Greek tart. The three of them settled down into a cozy relationship in the house on the Palatine, a relationship which had only one occasional marring element, Sulla's weakness for young boys. It was not, he assured his two women, a serious weakness; he had no taste for the innocent, no desire to seduce the sons of senators as they cavorted on the exercise fields of the Campus Martius, playing at fencing with their wooden swords and vaulting on and off the backs of stuffed bolsters saddled just like real horses. No, Sulla liked trollops, the professional pretty-boys up to every trick in town; the truth was, they reminded him of himself at the same age. But because his women detested his trollops, and he was in spite of his sexual appetites very much a man, he resisted his urges in this direction for the sake of domestic harmony, or else made sure he indulged himself mighty far away from the ken of Clitumna and Nicopolis. Until New Year's Eve, the last hours of the consulship of Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica and Lucius Calpurnius Bestia, the last hours before the commencement of the consulship of Marcus Minucius Rufus and Spurius Postumius Albinus. The Eve of Metrobius, it was likely to come to be called, if Clitumna and Nicopolis had anything to do with it. The three of them adored the theater, but not the highbrow Greek stuff of Sophocles and Aeschylus and Euripides, all masks and groaning throbbing voices and high-flown poetry. No, they loved comedy the giggle-gorged Latin larkery of Plautus and Naevius and Terence; and above all else the simple, maskless idiocy of the pure mime, with its naked strumpets, clumsy fools, clarion farts, elaborate practical jokes, improbable plots made up on the spur of the moment from traditional repertoires. Tall daisies stuck in arses wiggle-waggled; the movement of one finger was more eloquent than a thousand words; blindfolded fathers-in-law mistook tits for ripe melons; the adulteries were insane and the gods drunk nothing was sacred in the name of Mimus. They were friends with every comedic actor and director in Rome, didn't consider they threw a good party unless a cluster of "names" were present. As far as they were concerned, the tragic theater didn't exist and in that they were true Romans, for Romans adored a good laugh. So to the party at Clitumna's house on New Year's Eve were invited Scylax, Astera, Milo, Pedocles, Daphne, and Marsyas. It was of course a costume party; Clitumna reveled in dressing up, so did Nicopolis, and Sulla liked female impersonation of a certain kind, the kind where the onlooker can laugh at the antics of a patent man mocking women. Sulla had therefore got himself up as Medusa the Gorgon, complete with a wig of genuine living snakelets that had the whole room screaming in terror every time he lowered his head and threatened to charge, and a flowing mass of draperies in Coan floss silk that showed the guests his biggest snake all too clearly. His stepmother came as an ape, which meant she capered and scratched in a hairy coat, and bared blue-painted buttocks. Rather more orthodox because she was rather more beautiful than Clitumna, Nicopolis tricked herself out as Diana of the Grove, thus exposing her long slender legs and one perfect breast as she cavorted about to make the tinny arrows in her quiver rattle in time to the music of flutes, pipes, bells, lyres, and drums. The party got off to a swinging start. Sulla in his snaky getup was an undeniable success, but Clitumna the Ape was funniest. The wine flowed; the laughter and shrieks burst out of the peristyle-garden at the back of the house and drove all the conservative neighbors mad long before New Year's Eve became New Year's Day. Then, last guest to arrive, Scylax teetered through the door in cork-soled platform sandals, a golden-blonde wig, huge tits inflating his gorgeous gown, and the maquillage of an old whore. Poor Venus! In tow as his Cupid came Metrobius. Sulla's biggest snake took one look and stood up in less than a second, which didn't please the Ape or Diana of the Grove. Nor for that matter did it please Venus Scylax. And there ensued scenes as frenzied as any that ever enlivened farce or mime: a bouncing blue bottom, a bouncing bared breast, a bouncing blonde wig, a bouncing biggest snake, and a bouncing befeathered boy. Culminating in the best bounce of all, which was Metrobius and Sulla enjoying a little buggery in a corner they had fancied more secluded than it actually was. He had known, of course, that he was making a ghastly mistake; but knowing it didn't help in the least. From the moment he'd seen the dye running down those silky legs and the length of the lashes round those lustrous, night-dark eyes, Sulla had been finished, rolled up, hopelessly conquered. And when he brushed his hand across the little frilly skirt the boy wore and lifted it just enough to see how beautiful and hairless and dusky-hued was the endowment beneath, there was nothing else in the world he could do save what he did do, pull the boy into a corner behind a large pouffe and have him. Farce almost turned into tragedy. Clitumna took up a rare goblet of Alexandrian glass, broke it, and went in real earnest for Sulla's face. Whereupon Nicopolis went for Clitumna with a wine jug, and Scylax went for Metrobius with one of his cork-soled platform sandals. Everyone else stopped partying to watch, enchanted. Luckily Sulla was not drunk enough to have lost his extraordinary physical competence, so he dealt with the lot of them briskly and harshly: gave Scylax a wallop on one lavishly painted eye that bruised it for a month, administered the sharp ends of a quiverful of arrows to Diana's long bare legs, and turned Clitumna upside down across his knee to make her bare buttocks as black as they were blue. After which he kissed the boy a lingering tongue-borne thank-you, and took himself off to bed in a mood of towering disgust. It was only at dawn on New Year's Day that Sulla understood what was really the matter. Not farce. Not even comedy. A tragedy as strange and hideously convoluted as anything Sophocles ever imagined in his worst bout of despair at the antics of gods and men. Today, New Year's Day, was Sulla's birthday. He was exactly thirty years old. And he turned then to look at the two brawling bawling women in the bed, no trace of his Medusa of the night before now remaining, and he looked at them with such icy anger and pain and loathing that they stilled immediately to stone, and sat incapable of moving while he dressed in a fresh white tunic and had a slave drape his toga around him, a garment he hadn't worn in years save to the theater. Only when he had gone did the women regain power to move, and then they stared at each other and blubbered noisy tears; not for their own grief, but for his, which they didn't even begin to understand.
The truth was that Lucius Cornelius Sulla, thirty today, was living a lie. Had always lived a lie. The world in which he had dwelled for thirty years a world inhabited by drunkards and beggars, actors and whores, charlatans and freed-men was not his world at all. Rome was full of men bearing the family name Cornelius. But they had come to be called Cornelius because a father or a grandfather or however many generations back had once belonged, slave or peasant, to a patrician high aristocrat named Cornelius. When that patrician Cornelius emancipated them from their bondage in honor of a marriage or a birthday or a funeral, or because the purchase price of freedom had been saved up out of wages, they took his name, and so became Cornelius too. All those named Cornelius were clients of some patrician Cornelius because they owed him thanks for the citizenship which had come to them along with his name. Excepting Clitumna and Nicopolis, the people Lucius Cornelius Sulla knew automatically assumed he was just such a Cornelius, the son or grandson or however many generations back of a Cornelian slave or peasant; with his barbaric coloring, more likely by far to be slave than peasant. After all, there were patrician noblemen called Cornelius Scipio and Cornelius Lentulus and Cornelius Merula, but who ever heard of a patrician Cornelius Sulla? No one even knew what the word "Sulla" meant! But the truth was that Lucius Cornelius Sulla, enrolled by the censors according to his means among the capite censi, the Head Count masses of Rome owning absolutely no property, was a patrician nobleman, the son of a patrician nobleman, the grandson of a patrician nobleman, and so on through every generation going back to the days before the founding of Rome. His birth made Sulla eminently eligible for the full glory of the political ladder, the cursus honorum. By birth, the consulship was his. His tragedy lay in his penuriousness, the inability of his father to provide either the income or the property necessary to enroll his son among even the lowest of the five economic classes; all his father had bequeathed him was the raw and simple citizenship itself. Not for Lucius Cornelius Sulla the purple stripe on the right shoulder of his tunic, knight-narrow or senator-broad. There were those who knew him had heard him say his tribe was the Cornelia, and laughed him to scorn. Assuming he was of slave origins, they knew his tribe had to be either urban Esquilina or urban Suburana. For rural Cornelia was one of the four oldest of the thirty-five Roman tribes, and did not number members of the Head Count among it. On this thirtieth birthday Sulla should have been entering the Senate either as an elected quaestor approved by the censors, or else as his birthright, appointed by the censors without their requiring him to be elected quaestor. Instead, he was the kept plaything of two vulgar women, and there was not a single hope in the world that he would ever command the sort of fortune which would enable him to exercise his birthright. Next year was a censors' year oh, to be able to present himself at the censors' tribunal in the Forum Romanum and show the censors proof that he had property yielding him an income of a million sesterces a year! That was the senator's minimum. Or even property yielding an income of four hundred thousand sesterces a year! That was the knight's minimum. As things stood in reality, he owned no property at all, and his income had never exceeded ten thousand sesterces in a year, even now he was kept by women. The definition of abject poverty in Rome was the inability to own one slave, and that meant that there had been times in his life when Sulla was abjectly poor. He, a patrician Cornelius.
During those two years of brave defiance when he had lived in the insula up the Esquiline near the Agger, he had been forced to seek work on the wharves of the Port of Rome below the Wooden Bridge, had humped jars of wine and emptied urns of wheat in order to keep that one slave who indicated to the world that he was not abjectly poor. For as he grew older, so did his pride increase or rather, his consciousness of its utter humiliation. He had never succumbed to the urge to get a steady job, learn a trade in some foundry or carpenter's shop, or become a scribe, act as a merchant's secretary, or copy manuscripts for a publishing house or lending library. When a man labored on the wharves or in the market gardens or on some construction project, no one asked questions; when a man went to the same place of work each day, everyone asked questions. Sulla could not even enlist in the army a man had to be propertied for that too. Entitled by his birth to lead an army, Sulla had never handled a sword, straddled a horse, or cast a spear, even on the training fields and exercise yards around the Villa Publica on the Campus Martius. He, a patrician Cornelius. Perhaps had he gone to some remote patrician Cornelian relation and begged, the situation might have been remedied by the tendering of a massive loan. But pride which could stomach being kept by vulgar women balked at begging. For there were no patrician Cornelians of the Sullan branch left, only distant Cornelians indifferent to his plight. Better to be a nobody and owe nobody than a somebody groaning under the cliental obligations of a massive loan. He, a patrician Cornelius. Exactly where he intended to go when he flung out of the door of his stepmother's house, he had no idea. Only to snuff the damp air, walk off his anguish. Clitumna had chosen an odd place to live, given her background: in a street of successful advocates and backbencher senators and middle-income knights, too low down on the Palatine Germalus to afford a view, yet conveniently close to the political and business hub of the city, the Forum Romanum and its surrounding basilicae and marketplaces and colonnades. Of course Clitumna liked the safety of this location, far from the stews of the Subura with its concomitant crime, but her noisy parties and dubious friends had led to many an irate deputation from her neighbors, who preferred peace and quiet. On one side of her was the exceedingly prosperous merchant banker and company director Titus Pomponius, and. on the other side lived Gaius Julius Caesar, a senator. Not that they saw much of each other. That was one of the benefits (or drawbacks, viewed conversely) of inward-looking houses, with their windowless outer walls and a central court the peristyle-garden shielded from the neighbors by the rooms entirely surrounding it. But there was no doubt that when Clitumna's parties spilled out of her dining room into the open court of the peristyle-garden, the cacophony penetrated far beyond the boundaries of her property, and made her the chief district nuisance. Dawn had broken. Ahead of him Sulla could see Gaius Julius Caesar's women tittupping along on the high cork soles and higher cork heels of their winter shoes, sweet little feet elevated above the water in the middens. Going to watch the inauguration ceremony, he supposed, slowing his pace and regarding their closely wrapped forms with the unself-conscious appreciation of a man whose sexual urges were powerful and all-pervading. The wife was a Marcia, daughter of the builder of the Aqua Marcia, and not much above forty. Well, forty-five. Still slim and well cared for, tall, a brown lady with more than her share of good looks. Yet she couldn't rival her daughters. They were true Julias, blonde beauties both, though for Sulla's money it was the younger one took the laurels. For he had seen them from time to time going off to the market to shop with their eyes; their purses, as well he knew, were slender as their bodies. That was a family kept itself senatorial only by the skin of its teeth. The knight Titus Pomponius, Clitumna's neighbor on the other side, was more affluent by far. Money. It ruled the world. Without it, a man was nothing. Little wonder then that when a man levered himself into any position where he could snatch at the chance to enrich himself, he always, always did. For a man to enrich himself through the medium of politics, he had to secure election as a praetor; his fortune was made in that moment, the years of outlay finally paid dividends. For the praetor went to govern a province, and there he was a god, he could help himself. If possible, he fought a little war against some barbarian tribe on the borders, took their gold and their sacred treasures, sold the captives of his sword into slavery, and pocketed the proceeds. But if the war prospects were dismal, there were other avenues: he could deal in grain and various staple commodities, he could lend money at exorbitant rates of interest (and use his army to collect the debt if necessary), he could doctor the account books when the taxes were gathered, he could dole out Roman citizenships for a price, he could accept illicit fees for everything from issuing government contracts to exempting some local city from its tribute to Rome. Money. How to get it? How to get enough of it to enter the Senate? Dreams, Lucius Cornelius Sulla! Dreams! When Caesar's women turned right onto the Clivus Victoriae, Sulla knew where they were going. To the area Flacciana, the site of Flaccus's house. By the time he halted on the street above its steep slope of tired winter grass, the Julian ladies were settling themselves upon campstools, and a sturdy Thracian-looking fellow who had led their slave escort was busy erecting an open-fronted tent of hide to shelter his mistress from the rain, marginally heavier. The two Julias, Sulla noted, spent a very brief time sitting demurely alongside their mother; when she began to speak to Titus Pomponius's very pregnant wife, they picked up their folding stools and scampered down to where four Claudius Pulcher girls were sitting a considerable distance away from their mothers. Their mothers? Ah! Licinia and Domitia. Both women he knew quite well, since he had managed to sleep with each of them. Looking neither left nor right, he walked down the slope to where the two women sat. "Ladies," he said, inclining his head. "Miserable day." Every woman on the hill knew who he was a painfully interesting aspect of Sulla's predicament. His friends among the canaille always assumed he was one of them, but the Roman nobility didn't make that mistake. They knew he was the genuine article! They knew his history and his ancestry. Some were moved to pity him; a few like Licinia and Domitia would amuse themselves with him sexually; but none would help him. The wind was blowing from the northeast, and it brought upon its breath a sour reek of dead fire, a smell compounded of wet charcoal, burned lime, buried rotted bodies in the high thousands. Last summer all of the Viminal and the upper Esquiline had gone up in flames, the worst fire anyone in Rome could remember. Perhaps a fifth of the city had burned before the united populace had managed to demolish a sufficiently wide swath of buildings to cut the conflagration off from the jam-packed tenement insulae of the Subura and the lower Esquiline; the wind and the width of the Vicus Longus had prevented its spreading to the sparsely settled outer Quirinal, the northernmost of the hills within the Servian Walls. Even though half a year had elapsed since the fire, from where Sulla stood now on Flaccus's empty house site its terrible scar covered the heights beyond the Macellum market for a thousand paces, a full square mile of blackened ground, half-fallen buildings, desolation. How many people had died, no one knew. Sufficient anyway for there to have been no real housing shortage afterward. So the rebuilding was slow; only here and there did wooden scaffolds rear up a hundred and more feet, the sign of a new multistoreyed insula going up to fatten the purse of some city landlord. Highly amused, Sulla sensed the tension in Licinia and Domitia the moment they realized who was greeting them; not for anything would he be merciful and leave them in peace. Let them suffer, silly sows! I wonder, does each of them know I've slept with both of them? he asked himself, and decided they did not. Which added a deliciously piquant tang to the encounter. Eyes dancing, he watched their covert glances toward each other and toward the few women like Marcia who shared the place with them. Oh, not Marcia! Pillar of rectitude! Monument of virtue! "That was an awful week," said Licinia, voice pitched too high, her eyes fixed unswervingly upon the burned hills. "Yes," said Domitia, clearing her throat. "I was terrified!" babbled Licinia. "We lived on the Carinae then, Lucius Cornelius, and the fire kept rolling closer and closer. Naturally the moment it was out, I persuaded Appius Claudius to move over to this side of the city. Nowhere is safe from fire, but there can be no doubt it's better to have the Forum and the Swamp between oneself and the Subura!" "It was beautiful," said Sulla, remembering how he had stood every night of that week at the top of the Vestal Steps to watch, pretending that what he saw in all its monstrous glory was an enemy city after a sack, and he the general of Rome who had ordered it. "Beautiful!" he repeated. The gloating way in which he said the word made Licinia glance up at his face in spite of herself, and what she saw there made her glance away again very quickly, and bitterly regret ever placing herself in this man's power. Sulla was too dangerous, and not quite right in the head. "Still, it's an ill wind blows nobody any good," she labored on brightly. "My cousins Publius and Lucius Licinius bought up a lot of the vacant land afterward. They say its value is bound to soar in years to come." She was a Licinius Crassus, one of the millionaires many times over. Now why couldn't he find himself a rich bride, as her particular Appius Claudius Pulcher had done? Simple, Sulla! Because no father or brother or guardian of a rich noble girl would ever consent to such a match. His delight in playing with the women vanished; without a word he turned on his heel and stalked up the slope toward the Clivus Victoriae. The two Julias, he noticed as he passed, had been called to order, and sat again beside their mother under the lee of the hide shelter. His strange eyes flicked over them, dismissing Julia Big Sister, but dwelling appreciatively on Julia Little Sister. Ye gods, she was lovely! A honey cake soaked in nectar, a dish fit for an Olympian. He had a pain in his chest, and rubbed himself under his toga to force it away. But he was aware nonetheless that Julia Little Sister had turned on her campstool to watch him until he disappeared. He descended the Vestal Steps to the Forum Romanum and walked up the Clivus Capitolinus until he came to the back of the crowd in front of the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. One of his peculiar talents was his ability to set up shivers of disquiet in people who surrounded him, so that they moved away from his vicinity; mostly he employed it to gain himself a good seat in the theater, but now he put his talent to opening up access to the front of the crowd of knights, where he stood with a perfect view of the place of sacrifice. Though he had no right to be there, he knew no one would ever evict him. Few of the knights knew who he was, and even among the senators were faces unfamiliar to him, but there were enough men present who did know him to ensure that his presence would be tolerated. Some things no amount of isolation from the mainstream of noble public life could eradicate; perhaps they were, after so many generations a thousand years of generations actually inside the blood, little warning bells sounding knells of doom or disaster. Of choice he had never bothered to follow the political goings-on in the Forum Romanum, having concluded it was better to be ignorant than to chafe to participate in a life he could not have. And yet, standing at the front of the ranks of knights, he knew it was going to be a bad year. His blood told him this was to be another in what had proven to be a long line of bad years, ever since Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus had been murdered, and then, ten years later, his brother Gaius Gracchus forced to take his own life. Knives had flashed in the Forum, and Rome's luck was broken. It was almost as if Rome was dwindling away, running out of political puff. A gathering, he thought, eyes sweeping over the assembled ranks, of mediocrities and nonentities. Men stood there, half-asleep on their feet despite the chilly drizzle, who had been responsible for the deaths of more than thirty thousand precious Roman and Italian soldiers in less than ten years, most in the name of personal greed. Money again. Money, money, money. Though power entered into it too. One should never forget or underestimate power. Which drove which? Which was the means, which the end? That probably depended upon the individual. But where in this sorry lot were the great ones, the ones who would enhance rather than diminish Rome? The white bull was behaving badly. Little wonder, looking at the consuls of the year. I for one, he thought, would not willingly put my white neck under the chopper for the likes of Spurius Postumius Albinus, patrician though he might be. And where did they get their money from, anyway? Then he remembered. The Postumius Albinuses always married money. Curse their eyes. Blood began to flow. There was a great deal of blood in a fully grown bull. What a waste. Potency, power, pile-driver force. But what a beautiful color, richly crimsoned, slick yet thick, coursing downhill among the feet. It fascinated him; he couldn't tear his gaze away. Was everything crammed with energy always some shade of red? Fire. Blood. Hair his hair. Penises. Senatorial shoes. Muscle. Molten metal. Lava. Time to go. Go where? Still full of the vision of so much blood, his eyes lifted, encountered the steady fierce stare of a tall senator in the toga praetexta of a senior magistrate. Amazing! Now that was a man! But who? He didn't have the look of any of the Famous Families; isolated from his kind though he was, Sulla yet knew their distinctive physical features unerringly. Whoever the fellow was, he certainly didn't belong to a Famous Family. For one thing, his nose said he had a dollop of Celt in him; it was too short and straight to belong to a pure Roman. Picenum, then? And look at those gigantic eyebrows! Celt again. His face bore two battle scars, neither disfiguring. Yes, a formidable customer, fierce and proud and intelligent. A real eagle. Who? Not a consular, them Sulla knew down to the oldest one living. A praetor then. Not one of this year's praetors, however, for they were clotted together behind the consuls looking tremendously dignified and about as promising as an old queen with a bad dose of piles. Aaaaaaah! Sulla turned abruptly and stalked away from all of it, including the ex-praetor with the mien of an eagle. Time to go. Go where? Where else was there to go save the only refuge he had, between the moistly ageing bodies of his stepmother and his mistress? He shrugged, sneered. There were worse fates, worse places. But not, said a voice at the back of his mind, for a man who should be entering the Senate today.
3
The trouble with being an anointed sovereign visiting the city of Rome was that one could not cross its pomerium, its sacred boundary. So Jugurtha, King of Numidia, was forced to spend his New Year's Day kicking his heels in the outrageously expensive villa he was renting on the higher slopes of the Pincian Hill, overlooking the huge bend in the Tiber which enclosed the Campus Martius. The agent who had secured the villa for him had raved about its outlook, the view into the distance of the Janiculum and the Vatican Hill, the green sward of both the little Tiber-bounded plains, Martius and Vaticanus, the broad blue band of the big river. Bet there were no rivers the size of dear old Father Tiber in Numidia! the presumptuous little agent had burbled, all the while concealing the fact that he was acting for a senator who professed undying loyalty to Jugurtha's cause, yet was mighty anxious to close a deal for his villa that would keep him well supplied with the most costly of freshwater eels for months to come. Why did they think any man let alone a king! who was not a Roman was automatically a fool and a dupe? Jugurtha was well aware of who owned the villa, well aware too that he was being swindled in the matter of its rent; but there were times and places for frankness, and Rome at the moment when he closed the deal for the villa was not a place or a time for frankness. From where he sat on the loggia in front of the vast peristyle-garden, his view was unimpeded. But to Jugurtha it was a small view, and when the wind was right the stench of the nightsoil fertilizing the market gardens of the outer Campus Martius around the Via Recta was strong enough to make him wish he had elected to live further out, somewhere around Bovillae or Tusculum. Used to the enormous distances of Numidia, he thought the fifteen-mile ride from Bovillae or Tusculum into Rome a mere trifle. And since it turned out he could not enter the city anyway what was the point in being housed close enough to spit over their accursed sacred boundary? If he turned ninety degrees he could, of course, see the back cliffs of the Capitol and the wrong end of the mighty temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus in which, at this very moment, his agents assured him, the new consuls were holding the first senatorial meeting of their year in office. How did one deal with the Romans? If he only knew that, he wouldn't be the worried man he admitted to himself he was.
In the beginning it had seemed simple enough. His grandfather had been the great Masinissa, who had forged the Kingdom of Numidia out of the wreckage left strewn up and down two thousand miles of North African coast by Rome's defeat of Punic Carthage. At first Masinissa's gathering of power to himself had been with the open connivance of Rome; though later, when he had grown uncomfortably powerful and the Punic flavor of his organization gave Rome flutters of disquiet about the rise of a new Carthage, Rome turned somewhat against him. Luckily for Numidia, Masinissa had died at the right moment, and, understanding only too well that a strong king is always succeeded by a weakling, he left Numidia to be divided by Scipio Aemilianus among his three sons. Clever Scipio Aemilianus! He didn't carve up Numidia's territory into thirds; he carved up the kingly duties instead. The eldest got custody of the treasury and the palaces; the middle son was appointed Numidia's war leader; and the youngest inherited all the functions of law and justice. Which meant the son with the army didn't have the money to foment rebellion, the son with the money didn't have the army to foment rebellion, and the son with the law on his side had neither money nor army to foment rebellion. Before time and accumulating resentment might have fomented rebellion anyway, the two younger sons died, leaving the oldest son, Micipsa, to rule on alone. However, both his dead brothers had left children to complicate the future: two legitimate sons, and a bastard named Jugurtha. One of these young men would ascend the throne when Micipsa died but which one? Then late in his life the hitherto childless Micipsa produced two sons of his own, Adherbal and Hiempsal. Thus did the court seethe with rivalries, for the ages of all these potential heirs were skewed exactly the wrong way around. Jugurtha the bastard was the oldest of them all, and the sons of the reigning King were mere babies. His grandfather Masinissa had despised Jugurtha, not so much because he was a bastard as because his mother was of the humblest stock in the kingdom: she was a nomad Berber girl. Micipsa inherited Masinissa's dislike of Jugurtha, and when he saw what a fine-looking and intelligent fellow Jugurtha had grown into, he found a way to eliminate this oldest potential contender for the throne. Scipio Aemilianus had demanded that Numidia send auxiliary troops to assist him at the siege of Numantia, so Micipsa dispatched his military levy under the command of Jugurtha, thinking Jugurtha would die in Spain. It didn't turn out that way. Jugurtha took to war as born warriors do; besides which, he made immediate friends among the Romans, two of whom he was to prize as his best and dearest friends. They were junior military tribunes attached to the staff of Scipio Aemilianus, and their names were Gaius Marius and Publius Rutilius Rufus. All three were the same age, twenty-three. At the close of the campaign, when Scipio Aemilianus summoned Jugurtha into his command tent to deliver a homily on the subject of dealing honorably with Rome rather than with any particular Romans, Jugurtha managed to keep a straight face. For if his exposure to Romans during the siege of Numantia had taught him anything about them, it was that almost all Romans who aspired to high public office were chronically short of money. In other words, they could be bought. On his return to Numidia, Jugurtha carried a letter from Scipio Aemilianus to King Micipsa. It extolled the bravery, good sense, and superior intelligence of Jugurtha so much that old Micipsa put away the dislike he had inherited from his father. And about the time that Gaius Sempronius Gracchus died in the Grove of Furrina beneath the Janiculan Hill, King Micipsa formally adopted Jugurtha and raised him to senior status among the heirs to the Numidian throne. However, he was careful to indicate that Jugurtha must never become king; his role was to assume the guardianship of Micipsa's own sons, now entering their early adolescence. Almost as soon as he had set this situation up, King Micipsa died, leaving two underage heirs to his throne and Jugurtha as regent. Within a year Micipsa's younger son, Hiempsal, was assassinated at Jugurtha's instigation; the older son, Adherbal, escaped Jugurtha's net and fled to Rome, where he presented himself to the Senate and demanded that Rome settle the affairs of Numidia and strip Jugurtha of all authority.
"Why are we so afraid of them?" Jugurtha demanded, turning from his thoughts back to the present moment, the veil of soft rain drifting across the exercise fields and market gardens and obscuring the far bank of the Tiber completely. There were some twenty men on the loggia, but all save one were bodyguards. These were not gladiatorial hirelings, but Jugurtha's own men of Numidia the same men, in fact, who had brought Jugurtha the head of young Prince Hiempsal seven years before, and followed up that gift five years later with the head of Prince Adherbal. The sole exception and the man to whom Jugurtha had addressed his question was a big, Semitic-looking man not far short of Jugurtha in size, sitting in a comfortable chair alongside his king. An outsider might have deemed them closely related by blood, which in actual fact they were; though it was a fact the King preferred to forget. Jugurtha's despised mother had been a simple nomad girl from a backward tribe of the Gaetuli Berbers, a mere nothing of a girl who by some quirk of fate had owned a face and a body akin to Helen of Troy's. And the King's companion on this miserable New Year's Day was his half brother, son of his humble mother and the court baron to whom Jugurtha's father had married her for the sake of convenience. The half brother's name was Bomilcar, and he was very loyal. "Why are we so afraid of them?" Jugurtha asked again, more urgently, more despairingly. Bomilcar sighed. "The answer's simple, I would think," he said. "It wears a steel helmet a bit like a basin turned upside down, a brownish-red tunic, and over that a long shirt of knitted chain mail. It carries a silly little short sword, a dagger almost as big, and one or two tiny-headed spears. It isn't a mercenary. It isn't even a pauper. It's called a Roman infantryman." Jugurtha grunted, ended in shaking his head. "Only a part of the answer, Baron. Roman soldiers are perishable; they die." "They die very hard," said Bomilcar. "No, there's more to it than that. I don't understand! You can buy them like bread in a bakery, and that ought to mean they're as soft inside as bread. But they aren't." "Their leaders, you mean?" "Their leaders. The eminent Conscript Fathers of the Senate. They are utterly corrupt! Therefore they ought to be crawling with decay. Soft to melting, insubstantial. But they aren't. They're as hard as flint, as cold as ice, as subtle as a Parthian satrap. They never give up. Take hold of one, tame him to servility, and the next moment he's gone, you're dealing with a different face in a different set of circumstances." "Not to mention that all of a sudden there's one you need whom you can't buy not because he doesn't have a price, but because whatever his price is, you don't have it and I'm not referring to money," said Bomilcar. "I loathe them all," said Jugurtha between his teeth. "So do I. Which doesn't get rid of them, does it?" "Numidia is mine!" cried its king. "They don't even want it, you know! All they want to do is interfere. Meddle!" Bomilcar spread out his hands. "Don't ask me, Jugurtha, because I don't know. All I do know is that you are sitting here in Rome, and the outcome is on the laps of the gods." Indeed it is, thought the King of Numidia, returning to his thoughts.
When young Adherbal had escaped and gone to Rome six years ago, Jugurtha had known what to do, and had done it quickly. Off to Rome went a team of his ambassadors bearing gold, silver, jewels, works of art, whatever was likely to tickle a Roman noble's fancy. Interesting, that you could never bribe them with women or boys. Only with negotiable goods. The outcome of his embassage had been reasonably satisfactory, given the circumstances. They were obsessed with committees and commissions, the Romans, and enjoyed nothing better than to send off a small party of officials to the remotest ends of the earth, there to investigate, pontificate, adjudicate, ameliorate. Anyone else would just march in at the head of an army, but the Romans would turn up in togas escorted only by lictors, nary a soldier within emergency call; they would proceed to issue their orders, and expect to be obeyed just as if they had arrived at the head of an army. And mostly they were obeyed. Which returned him to his original question: why are we so afraid of them? Because we are. We are. But why? Maybe because there's always a Marcus Aemilius Scaurus among them? It had been Scaurus who prevented the Senate from deciding in favor of Jugurtha when Adherbal had gone bleating to Rome. A lone voice in a body of three hundred men! Yet he had prevailed, kept hammering away at them until he, the lone voice, actually won the lot of them over to his side. Thus it had been Scaurus who forced a compromise acceptable neither to Jugurtha nor to Adherbal: a committee of ten Roman senators led by the consular Lucius Opimius was to travel to Numidia and there after investigations made on the spot decide what to do. So what did the committee do? It divided the kingdom. Adherbal got the eastern end with Cirta as his capital, more closely populated and commercialized than, yet not as rich as, the western end. The western end had gone to Jugurtha, who found himself sandwiched between Adherbal and the Kingdom of Mauretania. Pleased with their solution, the Romans went home. Jugurtha promptly settled down to watch his mouse Adherbal, waiting his moment to pounce. And to protect himself on his west, he married the daughter of the King of Mauretania. He waited patiently for four years, then attacked Adherbal and his army between Cirta and its seaport. Beaten, Adherbal fell back on Cirta and organized its defense, assisted by the large and influential contingent of Roman and Italian merchants who formed the backbone of the business sector in Numidia. There was nothing odd about their presence in the country; wherever you went in the world, you would find a contingent of Roman and Italian businessmen running the local commercial sector, even in places with little connection to Rome and no protection. Of course the news of the outbreak of war between Jugurtha and Adherbal had reached the ears of the Senate in short order; the Senate responded by dispatching a committee of three charming young sons of senators (it would give the younger generation a bit of valuable experience; there was nothing very important in this squabble) to rap the Numidian knuckles. Jugurtha got to them first, maneuvered them out of any contact with Adherbal or the inhabitants of Cirta, and sent them home laden with expensive gifts. Then Adherbal managed to smuggle a letter out to Rome, a letter begging for help; always on Adherbal's side, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus immediately set out himself for Numidia, at the head of yet another committee of investigation. But so dangerous was the situation they found in all Africa that they were forced to remain inside the boundaries of the Roman African province, and eventually were obliged to return to Rome without interviewing either of the rivals for the throne, or influencing the course of the war. Jugurtha then went ahead and captured Cirta. Understandably, Adherbal was executed at once. Less understandably, Jugurtha took out his spleen at Rome by executing the Roman and Italian businessmen of Cirta down to the last man; for in so doing, he outraged Rome beyond any hope of conciliation. News of the massacre of the Romans and Italians resident in Cirta had reached Rome fifteen months ago, during autumn. And one of the tribunes-elect of the plebs, Gaius Memmius, created such a howl in the Forum that no amount of bribing by Jugurtha could avert catastrophe. The junior consul-elect, Lucius Calpurnius Bestia, was ordered to go to Numidia at the beginning of his term in office to show Jugurtha that he could not freely slaughter Romans and Italians. But Bestia had been a bribable man, so Jugurtha bribed, with the result that six months ago he had managed to negotiate a peace with Rome, and hand over thirty war elephants to Bestia along with a small gift of money for the Roman treasury and a much larger, undisclosed sum which found its way into Bestia's private coffers. Rome appeared to be satisfied; Jugurtha was undisputed King of all Numidia at last. But Gaius Memmius, oblivious to the fact that his term as a tribune of the plebs was finished, never shut up. Day after day he pursued his campaign to have the whole Numidian question gone into under the harshest light; day after day he accused Bestia of extorting money from Jugurtha in return for tenure of the throne; and finally Gaius Memmius achieved his aim, which was to browbeat the Senate into acting. Off to Numidia the Senate sent the praetor Lucius Cassius Longinus, under instructions to bring King Jugurtha in person to Rome, where he was to be made to provide Gaius Memmius with the names of all those he had bribed throughout the years. Had he been required to answer before the Senate, the situation would not have been so perilous; but Jugurtha was to answer before the People. When Cassius the praetor arrived in Cirta and served the King with his summons, Jugurtha could not refuse to accompany him back to Rome. Only why! Why were they all so afraid? What could Rome actually do? Invade Numidia? There were always more Bestias in office than there were Gaius Memmiuses! Why then were they all so afraid? Was it the gall of the Romans, that they could calmly dispatch a single man to snap his fingers at the ruler of a great and rich land, and bring him to heel? Jugurtha had come to heel, meekly packed his trunks, tapped a few barons on the shoulder to accompany him, selected the fifty best men in the Royal Numidian Guard, and taken ship with Cassius the praetor. That had been two months ago. Two months in which very little had happened. Oh, Gaius Memmius had lived up to his word! He had summoned an Assembly of the Plebs in the Circus Flaminius, which lay outside the pomerium, the sacred boundary of the city, and therefore constituted a venue Jugurtha the anointed sovereign could attend in person. The purpose of the meeting was to enable every interested Roman from highest to lowest personally to hear the King of Numidia answer Gaius Memmius's questions: whom had he bribed, how much money had he paid over? Everyone in Rome knew exactly the sort of questions Gaius Memmius was going to ask. So the Assembly in the Circus Flaminius was extremely well attended, the arena crowded, with latecomers accommodated in the wooden tiers of seats hoping even at the distance to be able to hear. However, Jugurtha still knew how to go about his defense; Spain and the years since had taught him too well ever to forget. He bought himself a tribune of the plebs. On the face of it, tribunes of the plebs were junior in the magisterial hierarchy and in senatorial rank. Tribunes of the plebs had no imperium now there was a word the Numidian language had no equivalent for! Imperium! Imperium meant well, the kind of authority a god on earth might possess. It was why a lone praetor could summon a great king to go with him. Provincial governors had imperium. Consuls had imperium. Praetors had imperium. The curule aediles had imperium. But each possessed a different strength or kind of imperium. The only tangible evidence of imperium was the lictor. Lictors were professional attendants who walked ahead of the owner of imperium to clear a path for him, carrying on their left shoulders the fasces, the bundles of rods lashed together with crimson cords. The censors didn't have imperium. Nor did the plebeian aediles. Nor did the quaestors. Nor most important for Jugurtha's purposes did the tribunes of the plebs. These last were the elected representatives of the plebs, that vast bulk of the Roman citizen body unable to claim the high distinction of being a patricius, a patrician. The patrician was the antique aristocrat, one whose family was listed among the Fathers of Rome. Four hundred years ago, when the Republic had been brand new, only the patrician had mattered. But as some plebeians gained money and power, and forced their way into Senate and curule chair, they wanted to be aristocrats too. The result: the nobilis, the nobleman. Thus was the patrician joined by the nobleman in a dual aristocracy. To be a nobleman, all that was necessary was to have a consul in the family, and there was nothing to stop a plebeian's becoming consul. Plebeian honor and ambition were satisfied. The plebs had their own assembly of government; no patrician could attend it, or vote in it. Yet so powerful had the plebs become and so eclipsed the patricians that this young body, the Plebeian Assembly, passed almost all the laws. Ten tribunes of the plebs were elected to look after the interests of the plebs. New ones every year. That was the worst feature of Roman government: its magistrates served for only a year, which meant you could never buy yourself one man who was going to last long enough to be of real service. Every year, you had to buy yourself another man. And usually you had to buy yourself several. No, a tribune of the plebs didn't have imperium, nor was he a senior magistrate; on the surface, he didn't seem to count for much at all. And yet he had managed to make himself the most significant magistrate of the lot. In his hands was true power, for he alone possessed the power of the veto. His veto affected everyone; no one save a dictator was immune from it, and there had not been a dictator in office for nearly a hundred years. A tribune of the plebs could veto a censor, a consul, a praetor, the Senate, his fellow nine tribunes of the plebs, meetings, assemblies, elections you name it, he could veto it and probably had. Also, his person was sacrosanct, which meant he could not be physically impeded in the execution of his duties. Besides which, he made the laws. The Senate could not make a law; all the Senate could do was to recommend that a law be made. Of course it was all designed to impose a system of checks and balances aimed at curbing the potential political power of any one body or any one individual. If the Romans had been a superior breed of political animal, the system would have worked too; but since they were not, it mostly didn't work. For of all the people in the history of the world, the Romans were the most adept at finding ostensibly legal ways around the law. So King Jugurtha of Numidia bought himself a tribune of the plebs a nobody really, not a member of one of the Famous Families, nor a wealthy man. However, Gaius Baebius was a duly elected tribune of the plebs, and when the stream of silver denarii was poured out on the table in front of him, he silently scooped his treasure trove into a dozen big bags and became the property of the King of Numidia. As the old year wore itself down, Gaius Memmius had convened his big meeting in the Circus Flaminius, and haled Jugurtha before it. Then, with the King standing submissively on the Flaminian rostra and the crowd of some thousands utterly silent, Gaius Memmius asked his first question. "Did you bribe Lucius Opimius?" he asked the King. And before the King could answer, Gaius Baebius piped up. "I forbid you to answer Gaius Memmius, King Jugurtha!" was all Gaius Baebius said. He didn't need to say a single word more. It was a veto. Directed by a tribune of the plebs not to answer, Jugurtha could not legally be made to answer. So the Assembly of the Plebs broke up; the disappointed thousands went home muttering; Gaius Memmius was so angry his friends had to lead him away under restraint; and Gaius Baebius trotted off exuding an air of great virtue which fooled no one. Yet the Senate hadn't given Jugurtha permission to return home, so here on New Year's Day he sat on his rented, hideously expensive loggia, cursing Rome, and cursing the Romans. Neither of the new consuls had yet given any indication that he might be interested in accepting a private donation; none of the new praetors was worth the effort of bribing, and the new tribunes of the plebs weren't inspiring either. The trouble with bribery was that it could not just be cast upon the waters; your fish first had to rise to the surface and make gobbling motions, thus assuring you that he was interested in swallowing a gilded bait. If no one swam up to mouth his interest at you, then you had to float your line and sit back and wait with every ounce of patience you could possibly muster. Yet how could he sit back and wait patiently when his kingdom was already the target of several greedy pretenders? Gauda, the legitimate son of Mastanabal, and Massiva, the son of Gulussa, had strong claims, though they were by no means the only claimants. To get home was vital. Yet here he sat, impotent. Were he to leave without the Senate's permission, his departure might be viewed as an act of war. As far as he knew, no one in Rome wanted war, but he didn't have enough evidence to tell him which way the Senate might jump if he did leave. And though it could not pass laws, the Senate had all the say in foreign affairs, from declaring war to governing the Roman provinces. His agents had reported that Marcus Aemilius Scaurus was furious at Gaius Baebius's veto. And Scaurus had enormous clout in the Senate, had once already swung it around single-handedly. Scaurus was of the opinion that Jugurtha boded no good for Rome.
Bomilcar the half brother sat quietly, waiting for Jugurtha to abandon his brooding. He had news to impart, but he knew his king better than to broach it while the storm signs were showing. A wonderful man, Jugurtha. So much innate ability! And how hard had his lot been because of the accident of his low birth. Why did heredity matter so much? The Punic Carthaginian blood in all the Numidian nobility was very marked in Jugurtha, but so too was the Berber blood he got from his mother. Both were Semitic peoples, but the Berber had lived far longer in North Africa than the Punic. In Jugurtha the two strains of Semite were perfectly married. From his mother's Berber fairness he had inherited his light grey eyes, his straight nose, and his long, gaunt-cheeked face, and from her too he had inherited his height. But from his father Mastanabal's Punic blood came his corkscrew-curled black locks, his dense black body hair, his swarthy skin, and his big-boned frame. Perhaps that was why he was so impressive: the eyes were a shock to see in one so dark, and frightening too. Hellenized by centuries of exposure to the Greeks, the Numidian upper classes wore Greek dress, which did not really suit Jugurtha, who looked his best in helmet and cuirass and greaves, sword at his side, war-horse champing. A pity, thought Bomilcar, that the Romans in Rome had never seen the King garbed for war; and then he shivered, horrified at the thought. A temptation of fate, to think that! Better offer the goddess Fortuna a sacrifice tomorrow, that the Romans never did see Jugurtha garbed for war. The King was relaxing; his face had softened. Awful, to have to banish this hard-earned peace, burden him with a fresh worry. But better he should hear it from his loyalest baron, his own brother, than have the news blurted out to him by some idiot agent avid to cause a maximum of consternation. "My lord king?" asked Bomilcar tentatively. The grey eyes turned his way immediately. "Yes?" "I heard a rumor yesterday, at the house of Quintus Caecilius Metellus." That flicked Jugurtha on the raw, of course; Bomilcar could go where he liked inside Rome, for he wasn't an anointed king. It was Bomilcar who was invited to dine, not Jugurtha. "What?" asked the King curtly. "Massiva has turned up here in Rome. What's more, he's managed to interest the consul Spurius Postumius Albinus in his case, and intends to have Albinus petition the Senate.'' The King sat up quickly, swinging his chair around so he could look directly into Bomilcar's face. "I wondered where the miserable little worm had wriggled off to," he said. "Now I know, don't I? But why him, and not me? Albinus must know I'll pay him more than Massiva ever could." "Not according to my sources," said Bomilcar uneasily. "I suspect they've made a deal which depends upon Albinus's being awarded Africa Province as his governorship. You're stuck here in Rome; Albinus hies himself off to Africa Province with a neat little army, a quick march across the border to Cirta, and all hail King Massiva of Numidia! I imagine King Massiva of Numidia will be very willing to pay Albinus pretty much what he asks." "I've got to get home!" the King cried. "I know! But how, tell me how?" "You don't think there's any chance I could sway Albinus? I've still got money on hand, I can get more!" Bomilcar shook his head emphatically. "The new consul does not like you," he said. "You neglected to send him a gift on his birthday, which was last month. Massiva didn't neglect to send him a gift. In fact, he sent Albinus a gift when he was elected consul, then another for the birthday.'' "That's my agents, curse them!" Jugurtha bared his teeth. "They're beginning to think I'm going to lose, so they're not even trying." He chewed his lip, wet it with his tongue. "Am I going to lose?" Bomilcar smiled. "You? Never!" "I don't know.. . . Massiva! Do you realize I'd forgotten all about him? I thought he was in Cyrenaica with Ptolemy Apion." Jugurtha shrugged, visibly pulled himself together. "It might be a false rumor. Who exactly told you?" "Metellus himself. He'd know. His ear's permanently to the ground these days, he's planning to run for consul next year. Not that he approves of the deal Albinus is making. If he did, he'd not have breathed a word of it to me. But you know Metellus one of the upright virtuous Romans, not a bribe in mind. And he dislikes seeing kings camped on Rome's doorstep." "Metellus can afford the luxury of virtuous uprightness!" said Jugurtha tartly. "What Caecilius Metellus isn't as rich as Croesus? They've carved up Spain and Asia between them. Well, they'll not carve up Numidia! Nor will Spurius Postumius Albinus, if I have anything to do with it." The King sat stiff in his chair. "Massiva is definitely here?" "According to Metellus, yes." "We must wait until we hear which consul is going out to govern Africa, and which to Macedonia." Bomilcar snorted derisively. "Don't tell me you believe in the lots!" "I don't know what I believe about the Romans," said the King somberly. "Maybe I think it's already decided, maybe I wonder if the drawing of the lots isn't that one time they're laughing at us, and actually have left it up to chance. So I will wait, Bomilcar. When I hear the result of the lots, I'll decide what to do." With that, he turned his chair around again, and went back to his contemplation of the rain.
4
There had been three children in the old white stuccoed farmhouse near Arpinum: Gaius Marius was the eldest, then came his sister, Maria, and finally a second son, Marcus Marius. It was naturally expected that they would grow up to take a prominent place in the life of the district and its town, but no one dreamed any of the three would venture farther afield. They were rural nobility, old-fashioned bluff and hearty country squires, the Mariuses, seemingly destined forever to be important people only within their little domain of Arpinum. The idea that one of them would enter the Senate of Rome was unthinkable; Cato the Censor made sufficient stir because of his rustic origins, yet he had come from a place no farther afield than Tusculum, a mere fifteen miles from Rome's Servian Walls. So no Arpinate squire imagined that his son could become a Roman senator. It wasn't a matter of money, for there was plenty of money; the Mariuses were most comfortably off. Arpinum was a rich locality many square miles in area, and most of its land was owned among three families the Mariuses, the Gratidiuses, and the Tullius Ciceros. When an outsider was needed as wife or husband of a Marius or a Gratidius or a Tullius Cicero, feelers went out not to Rome but to Puteoli, where the Granius family lived; the Graniuses were a prosperous clan of seagoing merchants who had originally hailed from Arpinum. Gaius Marius's bride had been arranged for him when he was still a little boy, and she waited patiently in the Granius household at Puteoli to grow up, for she was even younger than her betrothed. But when Gaius Marius fell in love, it was not with a woman. Or a man. He fell in love with the army a natural, joyous, spontaneous recognition of the life's partner. Enrolled as a cadet on his seventeenth birthday and lamenting the fact that there were no important wars going on, he nonetheless managed to serve continuously in the ranks of the most junior officers of the consul's legions until, aged twenty-three, he was posted to the personal staff of Scipio Aemilianus before Numantia, in Spain. It hadn't taken him long to befriend Publius Rutilius Rufus and Prince Jugurtha of Numidia, for they were all the same age, and all stood very high in the esteem of Scipio Aemilianus, who called them the Terrible Trio. None of the three was from the highest circles of Rome. Jugurtha was a complete outsider, Publius Rutilius Rufus's family hadn't been in the Senate more than a hundred years and had not so far managed to reach the consulship, and Gaius Marius was from a family of country squires. At this time, of course, none of the three was a bit interested in Roman politics; all they cared about was soldiering. But Gaius Marius was a very special case. He was born to be a soldier, but more than that; he was born to lead soldiers. "He just knows what to do and how to do it," said Scipio Aemilianus, with a sigh that might perhaps have been envy. Not that Scipio Aemilianus didn't know what to do and how to do it, but he had been listening to generals talk in the dining room since his early boyhood, and only he really knew the degree of innate spontaneity his own soldiering contained. Very little, was the truth. Scipio Aemilianus's great talent lay in his organization, not in his soldiering. He believed that if a campaign was thoroughly thrashed out in the planning room even before the first legionary was enlisted, soldiering had not much to do with the outcome. Where Gaius Marius was a natural. At seventeen he had still been rather small and thin; a picky eater and a crochety child always, he had been pampered by his mother and secretly despised by his father. Then he lashed on his first pair of military boots and buckled the plates of a good plain bronze cuirass over his stout leather underdress. And grew in mind and body until he was bigger than everyone else physically, intellectually, in strength and courage and independence. At which point his mother began to reject him and his father swelled with pride in him. In Gaius Marius's opinion there was no life like it, to be an integral part of the greatest military machine the world had ever known the Roman legion. No route march was too arduous, no lesson in swordplay too long or too vicious, no humiliating task humiliating enough to stem the rising tide of his huge enthusiasm. He didn't care what they gave him to do, as long as he was soldiering. It was at Numantia too that he met a seventeen-year-old cadet who had come from Rome to join Scipio Aemilianus's own select little band at Scipio Aemilianus's express request. This lad was Quintus Caecilius Metellus, the younger brother of that Caecilius Metellus who would, after a campaign against the tribesmen of the Dalmatian hills of Illyricum, adopt the last name of Dalmaticus and get himself appointed Pontifex Maximus, highest priest in the State religion. Young Metellus was a typical Caecilius Metellus: a plodder, with no spark or flair for the work on hand, yet determined to do it and unshakably convinced he could do it superbly well. Though loyalty to his class prevented Scipio Aemilianus's saying so, perhaps the seventeen-year-old expert at everything irritated him, for not long after young Metellus arrived at Spanish Numantia, Scipio Aemilianus handed him over to the tender mercies of the Terrible Trio Jugurtha, Rutilius Rufus, and Marius. Not old enough themselves to feel pity, they were as resentful as they were displeased at being given this self-opinionated millstone. And they took it out on young Metellus, not cruelly, just toughly. While Numantia held out and Scipio Aemilianus was busy, the lad put up with his lot. Then Numantia fell. Was torn down, extirpated. And everyone from highest officer to merest ranker soldier was allowed to get drunk. The Terrible Trio got drunk. So did young Quintus Caecilius Metellus, for it happened to be his birthday; he turned eighteen. And the Terrible Trio thought it a great joke to throw the birthday boy into a pigsty. He came out of the muck sober, spitting mad and spitting spite. "You you pathetic upstarts! Who do you think you are? Well, let me tell you! You're nothing but a greasy foreigner, Jugurtha! Not fit to lick a Roman's boots! And you're a jumped-up favor currier, Rutilius! As for you, Gaius Marius, you're nothing more than an Italian hayseed with no Greek! How dare you! How dare you! Don't you appreciate who I am? Don't you understand who my family is? I am a Caecilius Metellus, and we were kings in Etruria before Rome was ever thought of! For months I've suffered your insults, but no more! Treating me like an underling, as if I were the inferior! How dare you! How dare you!" Jugurtha and Rutilius Rufus and Gaius Marius hung rocking gently on the pigsty fence, blinking like owls, faces slack. Then Publius Rutilius Rufus, who was that rare individual capable of scholarship as profound as his soldiering was practical, put a leg over the top of the fence and managed to balance himself astride it, a huge smile growing. "Don't mistake me, I really do appreciate everything you're saying, Quintus Caecilius," he said, "but the trouble is that you've got a big fat pig turd on your head instead of a crown, O King of Etruria!" Out came a giggle. "Go and have a bath, then tell us again. We'll probably manage not to laugh." Metellus reached up and brushed his head furiously, too enraged to take sensible advice, especially when it was tendered with such a smile. "Rutilius!" he spat. "What sort of name is that, to adorn the Senate rolls? Oscan nobodies, that's who you are! Peasants!" "Oh, come now!" said Rutilius Rufus gently. "My Etruscan is quite good enough to translate the meaning of 'Metellus' into Latin, you know." He twisted where he sat on the fence and looked at Jugurtha and Marius. "It means, freed from service as a mercenary," he said to them gravely. That was too much. Young Metellus launched himself at Rutilius Rufus and brought him crashing down into the aromatic mire, where the two of them rolled and wrestled and thumped without enough traction to harm each other until Jugurtha and Marius decided it looked good in there, and dived in after them. Howling with laughter, they sat in the mud amid the more impudent pigs, which in the manner of impudent pigs couldn't resist investigating them thoroughly. When the Terrible Trio stopped sitting on Metellus and rubbing muck all over him, he floundered to his feet and escaped. "You'll pay for this!" he said through his teeth. "Oh, pull your head in!" said Jugurtha, and broke into fresh paroxysms of mirth.
But the wheel, thought Gaius Marius as he climbed out of his bath and picked up a towel to dry himself, turns full circle no matter what we do. Spite from the mouth of a half-grown sprig of a most noble house was no less true for being spiteful. Who were they in actual fact, the Terrible Trio of Numantia? Why, they were a greasy foreigner, a jumped-up favor currier, and an Italian hayseed with no Greek. That's who they were. Rome had taught them the truth of it, all right. Jugurtha should have been acknowledged King of Numidia years ago, brought firmly yet kindly into the Roman fold of client-kings, kept there with sound advice and fair dealing. Instead, he had suffered the implacable enmity of the entire Caecilius Metellus faction, and was currently in Rome with his back against the wall, fighting a last-ditch stand against a group of Numidian would-be kings, forced to buy what his worth and his ability ought to have earned him free and aboveboard. And dear little sandy-headed Publius Rutilius Rufus, the favorite pupil of Panaetius the philosopher, admired by the whole of the Scipionic Circle writer, soldier, wit, politician of extraordinary excellence had been cheated of his consulship in the same year Marius had barely managed a praetorship. Not only was Rutilius's background not good enough, he had also incurred the enmity of the Caecilius Metelluses, and that meant he like Jugurtha automatically became an enemy of Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, closely allied to the Caecilius Metelluses. and chief glory of their faction. As for Gaius Marius well, as Quintus Caecilius Metellus Piggle-wiggle would say, he had done better than any Italian hayseed with no Greek should. Why had he ever decided to go to Rome and try the political ladder anyway? Simple. Because Scipio Aemilianus (like most of the highest patricians, Scipio Aemilianus was no snob) thought he must. He was too good a man to waste filling a country squire's shoes, Scipio Aemilianus had said. Even more important, if he didn't become a praetor, he could never command an army of Rome. So Marius had stood for election as a tribune of the soldiers, got in easily, then stood for election as a quaestor, was approved by the censors and found himself, an Italian hayseed with no Greek, a member of the Senate of Rome. How amazing that had been! How stunned his family back in Arpinum! He'd done his share of time serving and managed to scramble a little way upward. Oddly enough, it had been Caecilius Metellus support which had then secured him election as a tribune of the plebs in the severely reactionary time which had followed immediately after the death of Gaius Gracchus. When Marius had first sought election to the College of Tribunes of the Plebs, he hadn't got in; the year he did get in, the Caecilius Metellus faction was convinced it owned him. Until he showed it otherwise by acting vigorously to preserve the freedom of the Plebeian Assembly, never more threatened with being overpowered by the Senate than after the death of Gaius Gracchus. Lucius Caecilius Metellus Dalmaticus tried to push a law through that would have curtailed the ability of the Plebeian Assembly to legislate, and Gaius Marius vetoed it. Nor could Gaius Marius be cajoled, coaxed, or coerced into withdrawing his veto. But that veto had cost him dearly. After his year as a tribune of the plebs, he tried to run for one of the two plebeian aedile magistracies, only to be foiled by the Caecilius Metellus lobby. So he had campaigned strenuously for the praetorship, and encountered Caecilius Metellus opposition yet again. Led by Metellus Dalmaticus, they had employed the usual kind of defamation he was impotent, he molested little boys, he ate excrement, he belonged to secret societies of Bacchic and Orphic vice, he accepted every kind of bribe, he slept with his sister and his mother. But they had also employed a more insidious form of defamation more effectively; they simply said that Gaius Marius was not a Roman, that Gaius Marius was an upcountry Italian nobody, and that Rome could produce more than enough true sons of Rome to make it unnecessary for any Roman to elect a Gaius Marius to the praetorship. It was a telling point. Minor criticism though it was compared to the rest, the most galling calumny of all as far as Gaius Marius was concerned was the perpetual inference that he was unacceptably crass because he had no Greek. The slur wasn't true; he spoke very good Greek. However, his tutors had been Asian Greeks his pedagogue hailed from Lampsacus on the Hellespont, and his grammaticus from Amisus on the coast of Pontus and they spoke a heavily accented Greek. Thus Gaius Marius had learned Greek with a twang to it that branded him improperly taught as a common, underbred sort of fellow. He had been obliged to acknowledge himself defeated; if he said no Greek at all or if he said miles of Asian Greek, it came to the same thing. In consequence he ignored the slander by refusing to speak the language which indicated that a man was properly educated and cultured. Never mind. He had scraped in last among the praetors, but he had scraped in nonetheless. And survived a trumped-up charge of bribery brought against him just after the election. Bribery! As if he could have! No, in those days he hadn't had the kind of money necessary to buy a magistracy. But luckily there were among the electors enough men who either knew firsthand of his soldierly valor, or had heard about it from those who did. The Roman electorate always had a soft spot for an excellent soldier, and it was that soft spot which won for him. The Senate had posted him to Further Spain as its governor, thinking he'd be out of sight, out of mind, and perhaps handy. But since he was a quintessential Military Man, he thrived.
* * *
The Spaniards especially the half-tamed tribes of the Lusitanian west and the Cantabrian northwest excelled in a kind of warfare that didn't suit most Roman commanders any more than it suited the style of the Roman legions. Spaniards never deployed for battle in the traditional way, cared nothing for the universally accepted tenet that it was better to gamble everything you had on the off chance of winning a decisive battle than to incur the horrific costs of a prolonged war. The Spaniards already understood that they were fighting a prolonged war, a war which they had to continue so long as they desired to preserve their Celtiberian identity; as far as they were concerned, they were engaged in an ongoing struggle for social and cultural independence. But, since they certainly didn't have the money to fight a prolonged war, they fought a civilian war. They never gave battle. Instead, they fought by ambush, raid, assassination, and devastation of all Enemy property. That is, Roman property. Never appearing where they were expected, never marching in column, never banding together in any numbers, never identifiable by the wearing of uniforms or the carrying of arms. They just pounced. Out of nowhere. And then vanished without a trace into the formidable crags of their mountains as if they had never been. Ride in to inspect a small town which Roman intelligence positively stated was involved in some clever minor massacre, and it would be as idle, as innocent, as unimpeachable as the most docile and patient of asses. A fabulously rich land, Spain. As a result, everyone had had a go at owning it. The original Iberian indigenes had been intermingling with Celtic elements invading across the Pyrenees for a thousand years, and Berber-Moor incursions from the African side of the narrow straits separating Spain from Africa had further enriched the local melting pot. Then a thousand years ago came the Phoenicians from Tyre and Sidon and Berytus on the Syrian coast, and after them came the Greeks. Two hundred years ago had come the Punic Carthaginians, themselves descendants of the Syrian Phoenicians who had founded an empire based on African Carthage; and the relative isolation of Spain was finished. For the Carthaginians came to Spain to mine its metals. Gold, silver, lead, zinc, copper, and iron. The Spanish mountains were loaded with all of them, and everywhere in the world the demand for goods made out of some and wealth made out of others was rapidly increasing. Punic power was based upon Spanish ore. Even tin came from Spain, though it wasn't found there; mined in the fabled Cassiterides, the Tin Isles somewhere at the ultimate limit of the livable globe, it arrived in Spain through little Cantabrian ports and traveled the Spanish trade routes down to the shores of the Middle Sea. The seagoing Carthaginians had owned Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica too, which meant that sooner or later they had to run foul of Rome, a fate that had overtaken them 150 years before. And three wars later three wars which took over a hundred years to fight Carthage was dead, and Rome had acquired the first of its overseas possessions. Including the mines of Spain. Roman practicality had seen at once that Spain was best governed from two different locations; the peninsula was divided into the two provinces of Nearer Spain Hispania Citerior and Further Spain Hispania Ulterior. The governor of Further Spain controlled all the south and west of the country from a base in the fabulously fertile hinterlands of the Baetis River, with the mighty old Phoenician city of Gades near its mouth. The governor of Nearer Spain controlled all the north and east of the peninsula from a base in the coastal plain opposite the Balearic Isles, and shifted his capital around as the whim or the need dictated. The lands of the far west Lusitania and the lands of the northwest Cantabria remained largely untouched. Despite the object lesson Scipio Aemilianus had made out of Numantia, the tribes of Spain continued to resist Roman occupation by ambush, raid, assassination, and devastation of property. Well now, thought Gaius Marius, coming on this most interesting scene when he arrived in Further Spain as its new governor, I too can fight by ambush, raid, assassination, and devastation of property! And proceeded to do so. With great success. Out thrust the frontiers of Roman Spain into Lusitania and the mighty chain of ore-bearing mountains in which rose the Baetis, Anas, and Tagus rivers. It was really not an exaggeration to say that as the Roman frontier advanced, the Roman conquerors kept tripping over richer and richer deposits of ore, especially silver, copper, and iron. And naturally the governor of the province he who achieved the new frontiers in the name of Rome was in the forefront of those who acquired grants of ore-bearing land. The Treasury of Rome took its cut, but preferred to leave the mine owning and actual mining in the hands of private individuals, who did it far more efficiently and with a more consistent brand of exploitative ruthlessness. Gaius Marius got rich. Then got richer. Every new mine was either wholly or partly his; this in turn brought him sleeping partnerships in the great companies which contracted out their services to run all kinds of commercial operations from grain buying and selling and shipping, to merchant banking and public works all over the Roman world, as well as within the city of Rome itself. He came back from Spain having been voted imperator by his troops, which meant that he was entitled to apply to the Senate for permission to hold a triumph; considering the amount of booty and tithes and taxes and tributes he had added to the general revenues, the Senate could not do else than comply with the wishes of his soldiers. And so he drove the antique triumphal chariot along its traditional route in the triumphal parade, preceded by the heaped-up evidence of his victories and depredations, the floats depicting tableaux and geography and weird tribal costumes; and dreamed of being consul in two years' time. He, Gaius Marius from Arpinum, the despised Italian hayseed with no Greek, would be consul of the greatest city in the world. And go back to Spain and complete its conquest, turn it into a peaceful, prosperous pair of indisputably Roman provinces. But it was five years since he had returned to Rome. Five years! The Caecilius Metellus faction had finally won: he would never be consul now.
"I think I'll wear the Chian outfit," he said to his body servant, standing waiting for orders. Many men in Marius's position would have lain back in the bath water and demanded that they be scrubbed, scraped, and massaged by slaves, but Gaius Marius preferred to do his own dirty work, even now. Mind you, at forty-seven he was still a fine figure of a man. Nothing to be ashamed of about his physique! No matter how ostensibly inert his days might be, he got in a fair amount of exercise, worked with the dumbbells and the closhes, swam if he could several times across the Tiber in the reach called the Trigarium, then ran all the way back from the far perimeter of the Campus Martius to his house on the flanks of the Capitoline Arx. His hair was getting a bit thin on top, but he still had enough dark brown curls to brush forward into a respectable coiffure. There. That would have to do. A beauty he never had been, never would be. A good face even an impressive one but no rival for Gaius Julius Caesar's! Interesting. Why was he going to so much trouble with hair and dress for what promised to be a small family meal in the dining room of a modest backbencher senator? A man who hadn't even been aedile, let alone praetor. The Chian outfit he had elected to wear, no less! He had bought it several years ago, dreaming of the dinner parties he would host during his consulship and the years thereafter when he would be one of the esteemed ex-consuls, the consulars as they were called. It was permissible to attire oneself for a purely private dinner party in less austere clothes than white toga and tunic, a bit of purple stripe their only decoration; and the Chian tapestry tunic with long drape to go over it was a spectacle of gold and purple lavishness. Luckily there were no sumptuary laws on the books at the moment that forbade a man to robe himself as ornately and luxuriously as he pleased. There was only a lex Licinia, which regulated the amount of expensive culinary rarities a man might put on his table and no one took any notice of that. Besides which, Gaius Marius doubted that Caesar's table would be loaded down with licker-fish and oysters.
Not for one moment did it occur to Gaius Marius to seek out his wife before he departed. He had forgotten her years ago if, in fact, he ever had remembered her. The marriage had been arranged during the sexless limbo of childhood and had lingered in the sexless limbo of an adult lack of love or even affinity for twenty-five childless years. A man as martially inclined and physically active as Gaius Marius sought sexual solace only when its absence was recollected by a chance encounter with some attractive woman, and his life had not been distinguished by many such. From time to time he enjoyed a mild fling with the attractive woman who had taken his eye (if she was available and willing), or a house girl, or (on campaign) a captive girl. But Grania, his wife? Her he had forgotten, even when she was there not two feet from him, reminding him that she would like to be slept with often enough to conceive a child. Cohabitating with Grania was like leading a route march through an impenetrable fog. What you felt was so amorphous it kept squeezing itself into something different yet equally unidentifiable; occasionally you were aware of a change in the ambient temperature, patches of extra moistness in a generally clammy substrate. By the time his climax arrived, if he opened his mouth at all it was to yawn. He didn't pity Grania in the least. Nor did he attempt to understand her. Simply, she was his wife, his old boiling fowl who had never worn the plumage of a spring chicken, even in her youth. What she did with her days or nights he didn't know, didn't worry about. Grania, leading a double life of licentious depravity? If someone had suggested to him that she might, he would have laughed until the tears came. And he would have been quite right to do so. Grania was as chaste as she was drab. No Caecilia Metella (the wanton one who was sister to Dalmaticus and Metellus Piggle-wiggle, and wife to Lucius Licinius Lucullus) about Grania from Puteoli! His silver mines had bought the house high on the Arx of the Capitol just on the Campus Martius side of the Servian Walls, the most expensive real estate in Rome; his copper mines had bought the colored marbles with which its brick-and-concrete columns and divisions and floors were sheathed; his iron mines had bought the services of the finest mural painter in Rome to fill up the plastered spaces between pilasters and divisions with scenes of stag hunts and flower gardens and trompe l'oeil landscapes; his sleeping partnerships in several large companies had bought the statues and the herms, the fabulous citrus-wood tables on their gold-inlaid ivory pedestals, the gilded and encrusted couches and chairs, the gloriously embroidered hangings, the cast-bronze doors; Hymettus himself had landscaped the massive peristyle-garden, paying as much attention to the subtle combination of perfumes as he did to the colors of the blossoms; and the great Dolichus had created the long central pool with its fountains and fish and lilies and lotuses and superb larger-than-life sculptures of tritons, nereids, nymphs, dolphins, and bewhiskered sea serpents. All of which, truth to tell, Gaius Marius did not give tuppence about. The obligatory show, nothing else. He slept on a camp bed in the smallest, barest room of the house, its only hangings his sword and scabbard on one wall and his smelly old military cape on another, its only splash of color the rather grimy and tattered vexillum flag his favorite legion had given him when their campaign in Spain was over. Ah, that was the life for a man! The only true value praetorship and consulship had for Gaius Marius was the fact that both led to military command of the highest order. But consul far more than praetor! And he knew he would never be consul, not now. They wouldn't vote for a nobody, no matter how rich he might be.
He walked in the same kind of weather the previous day had endured, a dreary mizzling rain and an all-pervading dampness, forgetting which was quite typical that he had a fortune on his back. However, he had thrown his old campaigning sagum over his finery a thick, greasy, malodorous cape which could keep out the perishing winds of the alpine passes or the soaking days-long downpours of Epirus. The sort of garment a soldier needed. Its reek stole into his nostrils like a trickle of vapor from a bakery, hunger making, voluptuous on the gut, warmly friendly. "Come in, come in!" said Gaius Julius Caesar, welcoming his guest in person at the door, and holding out his own finely made hands to receive the awful sagum. But having taken it, he didn't immediately toss it to the waiting slave as if afraid its smell might cling to his skin; instead, he fingered it with respect before handing it over carefully. "I'd say that's seen a few campaigns," he said then, not blinking an eye at the sight of Gaius Marius in all the vulgar ostentation of a gold-and-purple Chian outfit. "It's the only sagum I've ever owned," said Gaius Marius, oblivious to the fact that his Chian tapestry drape had flopped itself all the wrong way. "Ligurian?" "Of course. My father gave it to me brand-new when I turned seventeen and went off to do my service as a cadet. But I tell you what," Gaius Marius went on, not noticing the smallness and simplicity of the Gaius Julius Caesar house as he strolled beside his host to the dining room, "when it came my turn to equip and outfit legions, I made sure my men all got the exact same cape no use expecting men to stay healthy if they're wet through or chilled to the bone." He thought of something important, and added hastily, "Of course I didn't charge 'em more than the standard military-issue price! Any commander worth his salt ought to be able to absorb the extra cost from extra booty." "And you're worth your salt, I know," said Caesar as he sat on the edge of the middle couch at its left-hand end, indicating to his guest that he take the place to the right, which was the place of honor. Servants removed their shoes, and, when Gaius Marius declined to suffer the fumes of a brazier, offered socks; both men accepted, then arranged their angle of recline by adjusting the bolsters supporting their left elbows into comfortable position. The wine steward stepped forward, attended by a cup bearer. "My sons will be in shortly, and the ladies just before we eat," said Caesar, holding his hand up to arrest the progress of the wine steward. "I hope, Gaius Marius, that you won't deem me a niggard with my wine if I respectfully ask you to take it as I intend to myself, well watered? I do have a valid reason, but it is one I do not believe can be explained away so early. Simply, the only reason I can offer you right now is that it behooves both of us to remain in full possession of our wits. Besides, the ladies become uneasy when they see their men drinking unwatered wine." "Wine bibbing isn't one of my failings," said Gaius Marius, relaxing and cutting the wine pourer impressively short, then ensuring that his cup was filled almost to its brim with water. "If a man cares enough for his company to accept an invitation to dinner, then his tongue should be used for talking rather than lapping." "Well said!" cried Caesar, beaming. "However, I am mightily intrigued!" "In the fullness of time, you shall know it all." A silence fell. Both men sipped at their wine-flavored water a trifle uneasily. Since they knew each other only from nodding in passing, one senator to another, this initial bid to establish a friendship could not help but be difficult. Especially since the host had put an embargo upon the one thing which would have made them more quickly comfortable wine. Caesar cleared his throat, put his cup down on the narrow table which ran just below the inside edge of the couch. "I gather, Gaius Marius, that you are not enthused about this year's crop of magistrates," he said. "Ye gods, no! Any more than you are, I think." "They're a poor lot, all right. Sometimes I wonder if we are wrong to insist that the magistracies last only one year. Perhaps when we're lucky enough to get a really good man in an office, we should leave him there longer to get more done." "A temptation, and if men weren't men, it might work," said Marius. "But there is an impediment." "An impediment?" "Whose word are we going to take that a good man is a good man? His? The Senate's? The People's Assemblies'? The knights'? The voters', incorruptible fellows that they are, impervious to bribes?" Caesar laughed. "Well, I thought Gaius Gracchus was a good man. When he ran for his second term as a tribune of the plebs I supported him wholeheartedly and I supported his third attempt too. Not that my support could count for much, my being patrician." "And there you have it, Gaius Julius," said Marius somberly. "Whenever Rome does manage to produce a good man, he's cut down. And why is he cut down? Because he cares more for Rome than he does for family, faction, and finances." "I don't think that's particularly confined to Romans," said Caesar, raising his delicate eyebrows until his forehead rippled. "People are people. I see very little difference between Romans, Greeks, Carthaginians, Syrians, or any others you care to name, at least when it comes to envy or greed. The only possible way the best man for the job can keep it long enough to accomplish what his potential suggests he can accomplish is to become a king. In fact, if not in name." "And Rome would never condone a king," said Marius. "It hasn't for the last five hundred years. We grew out of kings. Odd, isn't it? Most of the world prefers absolute rule. But not we Romans. Nor the Greeks, for that matter." Marius grinned. "That's because Rome and Greece are stuffed with men who consider they're all kings. And Rome certainly didn't become a true democracy when we threw our kings out." "Of course not! True democracy is a Greek philosophic unattainable. Look at the mess the Greeks made of it, so what chance do we sensible Roman fellows stand? Rome is government of the many by the few. The Famous Families." Caesar dropped the statement casually. "And an occasional New Man," said Gaius Marius, New Man. "And an occasional New Man," agreed Caesar placidly. The two sons of the Caesar household entered the dining room exactly as young men should, manly yet deferential, restrained rather than shy, not putting themselves forward, but not holding themselves back. Sextus Julius Caesar was the elder, twenty-five this year, tall and tawny-bronze of hair, grey of eye. Used to assessing young men, Gaius Marius detected an odd shadow in him: there was the faintest tinge of exhaustion in the skin beneath his eyes, and his mouth was tight-lipped yet not of the right form to be tight-lipped. Gaius Julius Caesar Junior, twenty-two this year, was sturdier than his brother and even taller, a golden-blond fellow with bright blue eyes. Highly intelligent, thought Marius, yet not a forceful or opinionated young man. Together they were as handsome, Roman-featured, finely set-up a pair of sons as any Roman senator father might hope to sire. Senators of tomorrow. "You're fortunate in your sons, Gaius Julius," Marius said as the young men disposed themselves on the couch standing at right angles to their father's right; unless more guests were expected (or this was one of those scandalously progressive houses where the women lay down to dine), the third couch, at right angles to Marius's left, would remain vacant. "Yes, I think I'm fortunate," said Caesar, smiling at his sons with as much respect as love in his eyes. Then he turned on his elbow to look at Gaius Marius, his expression changing to a courteous curiosity. "You don't have any sons, do you?" "No," said Marius unregretfully. "But you are married?" "I believe so!" said Marius, and laughed. "We're all alike, we military men. Our real wife is the army." "That happens," said Caesar, and changed the subject. The predinner talk was cultivated, good-tempered, and very considerate, Marius noticed; no one in this house needed to put down anyone else who lived here, everyone stood upon excellent terms with everyone else, no latent discord rumbled an undertone. He became curious to see what the women were like, for the father after all was only one half of the source of this felicitous result; espoused to a Puteolan pudding though he was, Marius was no fool, and he personally knew of no wife of the Roman nobility who didn't have a large input to make when it came to the rearing of her children. No matter whether she was profligate or prude, idiot or intellectual, she was always a person to be reckoned with. Then they came in, the women. Marcia and the two Julias. Ravishing! Absolutely ravishing, including the mother. The servants set upright chairs for them inside the hollow center of the U formed by the three dining couches and their narrow tables, so that Marcia sat opposite her husband, Julia sat facing Gaius Marius, and Julilla sat facing her two brothers. When she knew her parents weren't looking at her but the guest was, Julilla stuck out her tongue at her brothers, Marius noted with amusement. Despite the absence of licker-fish and oysters and the presence of heavily watered wine, it was a delightful dinner served by unobtrusive, contented-looking slaves who never shoved rudely between the women and the tables, nor neglected a duty. The food was plain but excellently cooked, the natural flavors of meats, fruits, and vegetables undisguised by fishy garum essences and bizarre mixtures of exotic spices from the East; it was, in fact, the kind of food the soldier Marius liked best. Roast birds stuffed with simple blends of bread and onions and green herbs from the garden, the lightest of fresh-baked rolls, two kinds of olives, dumplings made of delicate spelt flour cooked with eggs and cheese, deliciously country-tasting sausages grilled over a brazier and basted with a thin coat of garlic and diluted honey, two excellent salads of lettuces, cucumbers, shallots, and celery (each with a differently flavored oil-and-vinegar dressing), and a wonderful lightly steamed medley of broccoli, baby squash, and cauliflower dashed over with oil and grated chestnut. The olive oil was sweet and of the first pressing, the salt dry, and the pepper of the best quality was kept whole until one of the diners signaled the lad who was its custodian to grind up a pinch in his mortar with his pestle, please. The meal finished with little fruit tarts, some sticky squares of sesame seed glued together with wild thyme honey, pastry envelopes filled with raisin mince and soaked in syrup of figs, and two splendid cheeses. "Arpinum!" exclaimed Marius, holding up a wedge of the second cheese, his face with its preposterous eyebrows suddenly seeming years younger. "I know this cheese well! My father makes it. The milk is from two-year-old ewes, and taken only after they've grazed on the river meadow for a week, where the special milkgrass grows." "Oh, how nice," said Marcia, smiling at him without a trace of affectation or selfconsciousness. "I've always been fond of this particular cheese, but from now on I shall look out for it especially. The cheese made by Gaius Marius your father is also a Gaius Marius? of Arpinum." The moment the last course was cleared away the women rose to take their leave, having had no sip of wine, but dined heartily on the food and drunk deeply of the water. As she got up Julia smiled at him with what seemed genuine liking, Marius noted; she had made polite conversation with him whenever he initiated it, but made no attempt to turn the discourse between him and her father into a three-sided affair. Yet she hadn't looked bored, but had followed what Caesar and Marius talked about with evident interest and understanding. A truly lovely girl, a peaceful girl who yet did not seem destined to turn into a pudding. Her little sister, Julilla, was a scamp delightful, yes, but a regular handful too, suspected Marius. Spoiled and willful and fully aware of how to manipulate her family to get her own way. But there was something in her more disquieting; the assessor of young men was also a fairly shrewd assessor of young women. And Julilla caused his hackles to ripple ever so softly and slightly; somewhere in her was a defect, Marius was sure. Not exactly lack of intelligence, though she was less well read than her elder sister and her brothers, and clearly not a whit perturbed by her ignorance. Not exactly vanity, though she obviously knew and treasured her beauty. Then Marius mentally shrugged, dismissed the problem and Julilla; neither was ever going to be his concern.
The young men lingered for perhaps ten more minutes, then they too excused themselves and departed. Night had fallen; the water clocks began to drip away the hours of darkness, twice as long as the hours of daylight. This was midwinter, and for once the calendar was in step with the seasons, thanks to the fastidiousness of the Pontifex Maximus, Lucius Caecilius Metellus Dalmaticus, who felt date and season ought to coincide quite Greek, really. What did it matter, so long as your eyes and temperature-sensing apparatus told you what season it was, and the official calendar displayed in the Forum Romanum told you what month and day it was? When the servants came to light the lamps, Marius noticed that the oil was of top quality, and the wicks not coarse oakum, but made from properly woven linen. "I'm a reader," said Caesar, following Marius's gaze and interpreting his thoughts with the same uncanny accuracy he had displayed at the outset of that chance meeting of eyes yesterday on the Capitol. "Nor, I'm afraid, do I sleep very well. Years ago now, when the children were first of an age to participate in family councils, we had a special meeting at which we decided each of us should be permitted one affordable luxury. Marcia chose to have a first-class cook, I remember but since that directly benefited all of us, we voted that she should have a new loom, the latest model from Patavium, and always the kind of yarn she likes, even if it's expensive. Sextus chose to be able to visit the Fields of Fire behind Puteoli several times a year.'' A look of anxiety settled momentarily upon Caesar's face; he sighed deeply. "There are certain hereditary characteristics in the Julius Caesars," he explained, "the most famous of which aside from our fairness of coloring is the myth that every Julia is born gifted with the ability to make her men happy. A present from the founder of our house, the goddess Venus though I never heard that Venus made too many mortal men happy. Or Vulcan either, for that matter. Or Mars! Still, that's what the myth says about the Julian women. But there are other, less salubrious gifts visited upon some of us, including the one poor Sextus inherited. I'm sure you've heard of the malady he suffers from the wheezes? When he gets one of his attacks, you can hear him wheezing from anywhere in the house, and in his worst attacks he goes black in the face. We've nearly lost him several times." So that was what was written upon young Sextus's brow! He wheezed, poor fellow. It would slow his career down, no doubt. "Yes," said Marius, "I do know the malady. My father says it's always worst when the air is full of chaff at harvest, or pollen in summer, and that those who suffer from it should stay away from the company of animals, especially horses and hounds. While he's on military service, keep him afoot." "He found that out for himself," said Caesar, sighing again. "Do finish your story about the family council, Gaius Julius," said Marius, fascinated; this much democracy they didn't have in the smallest isonomia in Greece! What an odd lot they were, these Julius Caesars! To an outsider's cursory gaze perfectly correct, patrician pillars of the community. But to those on the inside outrageously unorthodox! "Well, young Sextus chose to go regularly to the Fields of Fire because the sulphur fumes seem to help him," said his father. "They still do, and he still goes." "And your younger son?" asked Marius. "Gaius said there was only one thing in the whole world he wanted as a privilege, though it couldn't be called a luxury. He asked to be allowed to choose his own wife." Marius's eyebrows, hairily alive, danced up and down. "Ye gods! And did you grant him the privilege?" "Oh, yes." "But what if he does the usual boy's trick and falls in love with a tart, or an old trull?" "Then he marries her, if such is his wish. However, I do not think young Gaius will be so foolish, somehow. His head is very well connected to his shoulders," said the doting father tranquilly. "Do you marry in the old patrician way, confarreatio for life?" pressed Marius, scarcely believing what he heard. "Oh, yes." "Ye gods!" "My older girl, Julia, is also very level-headed," Caesar went on. "She elected membership in the library of Fannius. Now I had intended to ask for the exact same thing, but there didn't seem to be any sense in two of us belonging, so I gave the membership to her. Our baby, Julilla, alas, is not at all wise, but I suppose butterflies have no need of wisdom. They just" he shrugged, smiled wryly "brighten up the world. I would hate to see a world without butterflies, and since we were disgracefully improvident in having four children, it's nice that our butterfly didn't come along until last place. And had the grace to be female when she did come along." "What did she ask for?" Gaius Marius smiled. "Oh, about what we expected. Sweetmeats and clothes." "And you, deprived of your library membership?" "I chose the finest lamp oil and the best wicks, and struck a bargain with Julia. If I could borrow the books she borrowed, then she could use my lamps to read by." Marius finished his smile at leisure, liking the author of this moral little tale enormously. What a simple, unenvious, happy life he enjoyed! Surrounded by a wife and children he actually strove to please, was interested in as individuals. No doubt he was spot-on in his character analyses of his offspring, and young Gaius wouldn't pick a wife out of a Suburan gutter. He cleared his throat. "Gaius Julius, it has been an absolutely delightful evening. But now I think it's time you told me why I have had to stay a sober man." "If you don't mind, I'll dismiss the servants first," Caesar said. "The wine is right here where we can reach it ourselves, and now that the moment of truth has arrived, we don't need to be so abstemious." His scrupulousness surprised Marius, used now to the utter indifference with which the Roman upper classes viewed their household slaves. Oh, not in terms of treatment they were usually good to their people but they did seem to think that their people were stuffed and inanimate when it came to overhearing what ought to be private. This was a habit Marius had never become reconciled to himself; like Caesar, his own father had firmly believed in dismissing the servants. "They gossip dreadfully, you know," said Caesar when they were alone behind a tightly closed door, "and we've nosy neighbors on either side. Rome might be a big place, but when it comes to the spread of gossip on the Palatine why, it's a village! Marcia tells me there are several among her friends who actually stoop to paying their servants for items of gossip and give bonuses when the gossip turns out to be accurate! Besides, servants have thoughts and feelings too, so it's better not to involve them." "You, Gaius Julius, ought to have been consul, then turned into our most eminent consular, and been elected censor," said Marius with sincerity. "I agree with you, Gaius Marius, I ought indeed! But I haven't the money to have sought higher office." "I have the money. Is that why I'm here? And kept sober?" Caesar looked shocked. "My dear Gaius Marius, of course not! Why, I'm closer to sixty than I am to fifty! At this late stage, my public career is ossified. No, it is my sons with whom I am concerned, and their sons when the time comes." Marius sat up straight and turned on the couch to face his host, who did the same. Since his cup was empty, Marius picked up the jug and poured himself an unwatered draft, sipped it, and looked stunned. "Is this what I've been watering down to the merest taste all night?" he demanded. Caesar smiled. "Dear me, no! That rich I'm not, I assure you. The wine we watered down was an ordinary vintage. This I keep for special occasions." "Then I'm flattered." Marius looked at Caesar from under his brows. "What is it you want of me, Gaius Julius?" "Help. In return, I will help you," said Caesar, pouring himself a cup of the superb vintage. "And how is this mutual help to be accomplished?" "Simple. By making you a member of the family." "What?" "I am offering you whichever of my two daughters you prefer," said Caesar patiently. "A marriage?” "Certainly a marriage!" "Ohhhhhh! Now that's a thought!" Marius saw the possibilities at once. He took a deeper drink of the fragrant Falernian in his cup, and said no more. "Everyone must take notice of you if your wife is a Julia," said Caesar. "Luckily you have no sons or daughters, for that matter. So any wife you might take at this stage of your life must be young, and come from fertile stock. It is quite understandable that you might be seeking a new wife, no one will be surprised. But if that wife is a Julia, then she is of the highest patrician stock, and your children will have Julian blood in their veins. Indirectly, marriage to a Julia ennobles you, Gaius Marius. Everyone will be forced to regard you quite differently from the way they regard you now. For your name will be enhanced by the vast dignitas the public worth and standing of Rome's most august family. Money we have not. Dignitas we have. The Julius Caesars are directly descended from the goddess Venus through her grandson Iulus, son of her son Aeneas. And some of our splendor will rub off on you.'' Caesar put his cup down and sighed, but smilingly. "I do assure you, Gaius Marius, it is true! I am not, alas, the oldest son of my generation of the Julian house, but we do have the wax images in our cupboards, we do trace ourselves back for over a thousand years. The other name of the mother of Romulus and Remus, she who is called Rhea Silvia, was Julia! When she cohabited with Mars and conceived her twin sons, we gave mortal form to Romulus, and so to Rome." His smile grew; a smile not of self-mockery, but of sheer pleasure in his illustrious forebears. "We were the kings of Alba Longa, the greatest of all Latin cities, for it was our ancestor Iulus who founded it, and when it was sacked by Rome, we were brought to Rome and elevated in Rome's hierarchy to add weight to Rome's claim to head the Latin race. And though Alba Longa was never rebuilt, to this day the Priest of the Alban Mount is a Julius." He couldn't help himself; Marius sucked in a deep breath of awe. But said nothing, just listened. "On a humbler level," Caesar went on, "I carry no small measure of clout myself, even though I have never had the money to stand for any higher office. My name makes me famous among the electors. I am wooed by social climbers and the centuries which vote in the consular elections are full of social climbers, as you know and I am highly respected by the nobility. My personal dignitas is above reproach, as was my father's before me," Caesar ended very seriously. New vistas were opening up before Gaius Marius, who could not take his eyes off Caesar's handsome face. Oh yes, they were descended from Venus, all right! Every last one of them a beauty. Looks count and throughout the history of the world, it has always been better to be blond. The children I sired of a Julia might be blond, yet have long, bumpy Roman noses too! They would look as right as they would look unusual. Which is the difference between the blond Julius Caesars from Alba Longa and the blond Pompeys from Picenum. The Julius Caesars look unmistakably Roman. Where the Pompeys look like Celts. "You want to be consul," Caesar continued, "so much is clear to everyone. Your activities in Further Spain when you were praetor produced clients. But unfortunately you yourself are rumored to be a client, and that makes your clients the clients of your own patron." The guest showed his teeth, which were large and white and strong looking. "It is a slander!" he said angrily. "I am nobody's client!" "I believe you, but that is not what is generally believed," Caesar maintained, "and what is generally believed is far more important than what is actually the truth. Anyone with sense can discount the Herennius family's claim to hold you as their client the Herennius clan is infinitely less Latin than the Marius clan of Arpinum. But the Caecilius Metelluses also claim to hold you in their patronage as their client. And the Caecilius Metelluses are believed. Why? For one thing, because your mother Fulcinia's family is Etruscan, and the Marius clan owns lands in Etruria. Etruria is the traditional fief of the Caecilius Metelluses." "No Marius or Fulcinius, for that matter! has ever been in clientship to a Caecilius Metellus!" snapped Marius, growing angrier still. "They're far too wily to say I'm their client in any situation where they might be called upon to prove it!" "That goes without saying," said Caesar. "However, they dislike you in a most personal manner, which lends considerable weight to their claim. The fact is remarked upon constantly. Men say it's too personal a dislike to stem merely from the way you tweaked their noses when you were a tribune of the plebs." "Oh, it's personal!" said Marius, and laughed without humor. "Tell me." "I once threw Dalmaticus's little brother the same who is undoubtedly going to be consul next year into a pigsty at Numantia. Actually three of us did and none of the three of us has got very far with the Romans who wield the real influence since, that's certain." "Who were the other two?" "Publius Rutilius Rufus and King Jugurtha of Numidia." "Ah! The mystery is solved." Caesar put his fingertips together and pressed them against his pursed lips. "However, the accusation that you are a dishonorable client is not the worst slur attached to your name, Gaius Marius. There is another, more difficult to deal with." "Then before we go into that slur, Gaius Julius, how would you suggest I stop the client rumor?" asked Marius. "By marrying one of my daughters. If you are accepted as a husband for one of my daughters, it will give the world to understand that I do not find any evidence of truth in the client story. And spread the tale of the Spanish pigsty! If possible, get Publius Rutilius Rufus to confirm it. Everyone will then have a more than adequate explanation for the personal quality of Caecilius Metellus dislike," said Caesar, smiling. "It must have been funny a Caecilius Metellus brought down to the level of why, not even Roman pigs!" "It was funny," said Marius shortly, anxious to press on. "Now what's this other slur?" "You must surely know it for yourself, Gaius Marius." "I can't think of a single thing, Gaius Julius." "It is said that you're in trade." Marius gasped, stunned. "But but how am I in trade differently from three quarters of the rest of the Senate? I own no stock in any company which entitles me to vote in or influence company affairs! I'm purely a sleeping partner, a provider of capital! Is that what's said of me, that I take an active part in trade?" "Certainly not. My dear Gaius Marius, no one elaborates! You are dismissed with a general sneer, the simple phrase 'He's in trade.' The implications are legion, yet nothing concrete is ever said! So those without the wisdom to inquire further are led to believe that your family has been in trade for many generations, that you yourself run companies, farm taxes, get fat off the grain supply," said Caesar. "I see," said Marius, tight-lipped. "You had better see," said Caesar gently. "I do nothing in business that any Caecilius Metellus does not! In fact, I'm probably less actively involved in business." "I agree. But if I had been advising you all along, Gaius Marius," said Caesar, "I would have tried to persuade you to avoid any business venture that didn't involve owning land or property. Your mines are above reproach; they're good, solid real estate. But for a New Man well, company dealings aren't at all wise. You should have stuck to only those ventures which are absolutely unimpeachable for a senator land and property." "You mean, my company activities are yet another indication that I am not and never can be a Roman nobleman,'' said Gaius Marius bitterly. "Precisely!" Marius squared his shoulders; to dwell upon the hurt of a manifest injustice was a waste of precious time and energy. Instead, he turned his thoughts to the alluring prospect of marrying a girl of the Julian house. "Do you really believe my marrying one of your daughters will improve my public image so much, Gaius Julius?" "It can't not." "A Julia... Why then shouldn't I apply to marry a Sulpicia or a Claudia or an Aemilia or a Cornelia? A girl from any of the old patrician houses would surely do as well no, even better! I'd have the ancient name plus a great deal more current political clout," said Marius. Smiling, Caesar shook his head. "I refuse to be provoked, Gaius Marius, so don't bother trying. Yes, you could marry a Cornelia or an Aemilia. But everyone would know you simply bought the girl. The advantage of marrying a Julia lies in the fact that the Julius Caesars have never sold their daughters to rich nobodies desirous of carving public careers for themselves and a noble heritage for their progeny. The very fact that you have been permitted to marry a Julia will inform the world that you are deserving of every political honor, and that the slurs upon your name are pure malice. The Julius Caesars have always been above selling their daughters. It is a universally known fact." Caesar paused to think for a moment, then added, "Mind you, I shall strongly advise both my sons to make capital out of our quirkiness and marry their daughters to rich nobodies as fast as they can!" Marius leaned back with a second full cup. “Gaius Julius, just why are you offering me this chance?" he asked. Caesar frowned. "There are two reasons," he said. "The first is perhaps not very sensible, but out of it came my decision to reverse our traditional family reluctance to make financial capital out of our children. You see, when I noticed you yesterday at the inauguration, I was visited with a premonition. Now I am not a man who is premonition-prone, you must understand. But I swear by all the gods, Gaius Marius, that suddenly I knew that I was looking at a man who would given the chance! carry Rome on his back out of terrible danger. And I knew too that if you were not given the chance, Rome would cease to be." He shrugged, shivered. "Well, there's a strong streak of superstition in every Roman, and in the really old families, it's very highly developed. I believed what I felt. After the passage of a day, I still believe what I felt. And wouldn't it be lovely, I thought to myself, if I, a humble backbencher senator, gave Rome the man Rome is going to need so desperately?" "I feel it too," said Marius abruptly. "I have ever since I went to Numantia." "So there you are! Two of us." "And your second reason, Gaius Julius?" Caesar sighed. "I have reached an age where I must face the fact that I have not so far managed to provide for my children as a father should. Love they have had. Material comfort they have had, without the burden of too much material comfort. Education they have had. But this house, plus five hundred iugera of land in the Alban Hills, is all I own." He sat up, crossed his legs, leaned forward again. "I have four children. That's two too many, as you well know. Two sons, two daughters. What I own will not ensure the public careers of my sons, even as backbenchers like their father. If I divide what I have between my two boys, neither will qualify for the senatorial census. If I leave what I have to my elder boy, Sextus, he will survive after my fashion. But my younger boy, Gaius, will be so penurious he will not even qualify for the knights' census. In effect, I will make a Lucius Cornelius Sulla out of him do you know Lucius Cornelius Sulla?" asked Caesar. "No," said Marius. "His stepmother is my next-door neighbor, a ghastly woman of low birth and no sense, but very rich. However, she has blood kin of her own who will inherit her money, a nephew, I believe. How do I know so much about her circumstances? The penalty of being a neighbor who also happens to be a senator. She badgered me to draw up her will for her, and never stopped talking. Her stepson, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, lives with her, according to her because he literally has nowhere else to go. Imagine it a patrician Cornelius old enough to be in the Senate right now, but with absolutely no hope of ever entering the Senate. He is destitute! His branch of the family is long decayed, and his father had virtually nothing; to compound Lucius Cornelius's woes, the father turned to wine, and whatever might have been left was drunk up years ago. It was the father married my next-door neighbor, who has kept the son under her roof since her husband died, but is not prepared to do anything else for him. You, Gaius Marius, have been infinitely luckier than Lucius Cornelius Sulla, for at least your family was affluent enough to give you the property and income of a senator when the opportunity came for you to enter the Senate. Your New Man status could not keep you out of the Senate when the opportunity came, where failure to meet the means test most certainly would have. Lucius Cornelius Sulla's birth is impeccable on both sides. But his penuriousness has effectively excluded him from his rightful position in the scheme of things. And I find I care too much for the welfare of my younger son to reduce him or his children or his children's children to the circumstances of a Lucius Cornelius Sulla," said Caesar with some passion. "Birth is an accident!" said Marius with equal passion. "Why should it have the power to dictate the course of a life?" "Why should money?" Caesar countered. "Come now, Gaius Marius, admit that it is the way of all men in all lands to value birth and money. Roman society I find more flexible than most, as a matter of fact compared to the Kingdom of the Parthians, for example, Rome is as ideal as Plato's hypothetical Republic! In Rome, there have actually been cases where men managed to rise from nothing. Not, mind you, that I have ever personally admired any of them who have done so," said Caesar reflectively. "The struggle seems to ruin them as men." "Then perhaps it's better that Lucius Cornelius Sulla stay right where he is," said Marius. "Certainly not!" said Caesar firmly. "I admit that your being a New Man has inflicted an unkind and unjust fate upon you, Gaius Marius, but I am sufficiently a man of my class to deplore the fate of Lucius Cornelius Sulla!" He assumed an expression of businesslike decision. "However, what concerns me at the moment is the fate of my children. My daughters, Gaius Marius, are dowerless! I cannot even scrape together a pittance for them, because to do so would impoverish my sons. That means my daughters have absolutely no chance of marrying men of their own class. I apologize, Gaius Marius, if in saying that you deem I have insulted you. But I don't mean men like yourself, I mean" he waved his hands about "let me say that again. I mean I will have to marry my daughters to men I don't like, don't admire, have nothing in common with. I wouldn't marry them to men of their own class whom I didn't like, either! A decent, honorable, likable man is my desire. But I won't have the opportunity to discover him. The ones who will apply to me for my daughters' hands will be presumptuous ingrates I'd rather show the toe of my boot than the palm of my hand. It's similar to the fate of a rich widow; decent men will have none of her for fear of being deemed a fortune hunter, so that the only ones she is left to choose from are fortune hunters." Caesar slid off the couch and sat on its back edge with his feet dangling. "Would you mind, Gaius Marius, if we took a stroll in the garden? It's cold out there, I know, but I can give you a warm wrap. It's been a long evening, and not an easy one for me. I'm beginning to feel my bones seizing up." Without a word Marius levered himself off the couch, took Caesar's shoes and slipped them onto Caesar's feet, laced them with the swift efficiency of an organized mind. Then he did the same for himself, and stood up, his hand beneath Caesar's elbow. "That's why I like you so much," said Caesar. "No nonsense, no pretenses." It was a small peristyle, yet it had a certain charm few city garden-courtyards possessed. Despite the season, aromatic herbs still thrived and gave off delicious scents, and the plantings were mostly perennial evergreens. Small country habits died hard in the Julius Caesars, Marius noticed with a thrill of gratified warmth; along the edges of the eaves, where they would catch the sun yet not get wet, there hung hundreds of little bunches of fleabane drying, just as at his father's house in Arpinum. By the end of January they would be tucked into every clothes chest and corner from one end of the domus to the other, to discourage fleas, silverfish, vermin of all kinds. Fleabane was cut at the winter solstice for drying; Marius hadn't thought there was a household in Rome knew of it. Because there had been a guest to dinner, the chandeliers which hung from the ceiling of the colonnade surrounding the peristyle all burned faintly, and the little bronze lamps which lit the paths of the garden glowed a delicate amber through the wafer-thin marble of their round sides. The rain had ceased, but fat drops of water coated every shrub and bush, and the air was vaporous, chill. Neither man noticed. Heads together (they were both tall, so it was comfortable to lean their heads together), they paced down the walkways, and finally stood by the little pool and fountain at the middle of the garden, its quartet of stone dryads holding torches aloft. It being winter, the pool was empty and the fountain turned off. This, thought Gaius Marius (whose pool and fountain were full of water all year round thanks to a system of heating), is real. None of my tritons and dolphins and gushing waterfalls move me as this little old relic does. "Are you interested in marrying one of my daughters?" asked Caesar, not anxiously, yet conveying anxiety. "Yes, Gaius Julius, I am," said Marius with decision. "Will it grieve you to divorce your wife?" "Not in the least." Marius cleared his throat. "What do you require of me, Gaius Julius, in return for the gift of a bride and your name?" "A great deal, as a matter of fact," said Caesar. "Since you will be admitted into the family in the guise of a second father rather than as a son-in-law a privilege of age! I will expect you to dower my other daughter and contribute to the welfare of both my sons. In the case of the unlucky daughter and my younger son, money and property are necessarily a large part of it. But you must be willing to throw your weight behind both my boys when they enter the Senate and begin their journey toward the consulship. I want both my boys to be consuls, you see. My son Sextus is one year older than the elder of the two boys my brother, Sextus, kept for himself, so my son Sextus will be the first of this generation's Julius Caesars to be of age to seek the consulship. I want him consul in his proper year, twelve years after entering the Senate, forty-two after his birth. He will be the first Julian consul in four hundred years. I want that distinction! Otherwise, my brother Sextus's son Lucius will become the first Julian consul, in the following year." Pausing to peer at Marius's dimly lit face, Caesar put out a reassuring hand. "Oh, there was never bad feeling between my brother and me while he was alive, nor is there now between me and mine, and his two sons. But a man should be consul in his proper year. It looks best." "Your brother, Sextus, adopted his oldest boy out, didn't he?" asked Marius, striving to recollect what a Roman of the Romans would have known without stopping to think. "Yes, a very long time ago. His name was Sextus too, it's the name we normally give to our eldest sons." "Of course! Quintus Lutatius Catulus! I would have remembered if he used Caesar as part of his name, but he doesn't, does he? He'll surely be the first Caesar to attain the consulship, he's a lot older than any of the others." "No," said Caesar, shaking his head emphatically. "He's not a Caesar anymore, he's a Lutatius Catulus." "I gather that old Catulus paid well for his adopted son," said Marius. "There seems to be plenty of money in your late brother's family, anyway." "Yes, he paid very dearly. As you will for your new wife, Gaius Marius." "Julia. I'll take Julia," said Marius. "Not the little one?" asked Caesar, sounding surprised. "Well, I admit I'm glad, for no other reason than I consider no girl should be married before she turns eighteen, and Julilla is still a year and a half off that. I think you've chosen rightly, as a matter of fact. Yet I've always thought Julilla the more attractive and interesting of the two." "You would, you're her father," said Marius, grinning. "No, Gaius Julius, your younger daughter doesn't tempt me in the least. If she isn't wild about the fellow she marries, I think she'll lead him a merry dance. I'm too old for girlish caprices. Where Julia seems to me to have sense as good as her looks. I liked everything about her." "She'll make an excellent consul's wife." "Do you honestly think I'll succeed in being consul?" Caesar nodded. "Oh, certainly! But not straightaway. Marry Julia first, then let things and people settle down. Try to find yourself a decent war for a couple of years it will help enormously if you've got a recent military success to your credit. Offer your services to someone as a senior legate. Then seek the consulship two or three years hence." "But I'll be fifty years old," said Marius dismally. "They don't like electing men so far past the normal age." "You're already too old, so what matter another two or three years? They'll stand you in good stead if you use them well. And you don't look your age, Gaius Marius, an important factor. If you were visibly running to seed, it would be quite different. Instead, you're the picture of health and vigor and you're a big man in size, which always impresses the Centuriate electors. In fact, New Man or not, if you hadn't incurred the enmity of the Caecilius Metelluses, you would have been a strong contender for the consulship three years ago, in your proper time for it. Were you an insignificant-looking little chap with a skinny right arm, even a Julia mightn't help. As it is, you'll be consul, never fear." "What exactly do you want me to do for your sons?" "In terms of property?" "Yes," said Marius, forgetting his Chian finery and sitting down on a bench of white unpolished marble. Since he sat there for some time and the bench was very wet, when he rose he left a mottled, oddly natural-looking pinkish-purple stain all over it. The purple dye from his outfit percolated into the porous stone and fixed itself, so that the bench became in the fullness of time, a generation or two down the years one of the most admired and prized pieces of furniture another Gaius Julius Caesar was to bring into the Domus Publicus of the Pontifex Maximus. To the Gaius Julius Caesar who concluded a marriage bargain with Gaius Marius, however, the bench was an omen; a wonderful, wonderful omen. When the slave came to tell him of the miracle in the morning and he saw it for himself (the slave was awed rather than horrified everyone knew the regal significance of the color purple), he heaved a sigh of perfect satisfaction. For the purple bench told him that in striking this marriage bargain, he was advancing his family to the purple of highest office. And it became fused in his mind with that strange premonition; yes, Gaius Marius had a place in Rome's fate that Rome as yet did not dream of. Caesar removed the bench from the garden and put it in his atrium, but he never told a soul how exactly it had become overnight a richly mottled, delicately veined purple and pink. An omen! "For my son Gaius, I need enough good land to ensure him a seat in the Senate," Caesar said now to his seated guest. "It so happens that there are six hundred iugera of excellent land for sale right at this moment, adjoining my own five hundred in the Alban Hills." "The price?" "Horrible, given its quality and proximity to Rome. It's a seller's market, unfortunately." Caesar took a deep breath. "Four million sesterces a million denarii," he said heroically. "Agreed," said Marius, as if Caesar had said four thousand sesterces rather than four million. "However, I do think it prudent if we keep our dealings secret for the moment." "Oh, absolutely!" said Caesar fervently. "Then I'll bring you the money tomorrow myself, in cash," said Marius, smiling. "And what else do you want?" "I expect that before my elder son enters the Senate, you will have turned into a consular. You will have influence and power, both from this fact and from your marriage to my Julia. I expect you to use your influence and power to advance my sons as they stand for the various offices. In fact, if you do get a military legateship to tide you over the next two or three years, I expect you to take my sons with you to your war. They are not inexperienced, they've both been cadets and junior officers, but they need more military service to help their careers, and under you, they'll be under the best." Privately Marius didn't think either young man was the stuff of which great commanders were made, but he did think they would be more than adequate officers, so he made no comment other than to say, "I'd be glad to have them, Gaius Julius." Caesar ploughed on. "As regards their political careers, they have the grave disadvantage of being patricians. As you well know, that means they can't run for office as tribunes of the plebs, and to make a splash as a tribune of the plebs is far and away the most telling method of establishing a political reputation. My sons will have to seek the curule aedileship punitively expensive! So I expect you to make sure both Sextus and Gaius are elected curule aediles, with enough money in their purses to put on the kind of games and shows the people will remember affectionately when they go to the polls to elect praetors. And if it should prove necessary for my sons to buy votes at any stage, I expect you to provide the money." "Agreed," said Gaius Marius, and held out his right hand with commendable alacrity, considering the magnitude of Caesar's demands; he was committing himself to a union which would cost him at least ten million sesterces. Gaius Julius Caesar took the hand, clasped it strongly, warmly. "Good!" he said, and laughed. They turned to walk back into the house, where Caesar sent a sleepy servant to fetch the old sagum for its owner. "When may I see Julia, talk to her?" asked Marius when his head emerged from the opening in the center of the sagum's wagon-wheel-sized circle. "Tomorrow afternoon," said Caesar, opening the front door himself. "Good night, Gaius Marius." "Good night, Gaius Julius," said Marius, and stepped out into the piercing cold of a rising north wind. He walked home without feeling it, warmer than he had been in a very long time. Was it possible that his unwelcome guest, the feeling, had been right to continue to dwell inside him? To be consul! To set his family's feet firmly on the hallowed ground of the Roman nobility! If he could do that, then it definitely behooved him to sire a son. Another Gaius Marius.
The Julias shared a small sitting room, in which they met the next morning to break their fast. Julilla was unusually restless, hopping from one foot to the other, unable to settle. "What is the matter?" her sister asked, exasperated. "Can't you tell? There's something in the wind, and I want to meet Clodilla in the flower market this morning I promised her I would! But I think we're all going to have to stay home for another boring old family conference," said Julilla gloomily. "You know," said Julia, "you really are unappreciative! How many other girls do you know who actually have the privilege of saying what they think at a family conference?' ' "Oh, rubbish, they're boring, we never talk about anything interesting just servants and unaffordables and tutors I want to leave school, I'm fed up with Homer and boring old Thucydides! What use are they to a girl?" "They mark her out as well educated and cultured," said Julia repressively. "Don't you want a good husband?" Julilla giggled. "My notion of a good husband does not include Homer and Thucydides," she said. "Oh, I want to go out this morning!" And she jigged up and down. "Knowing you, if you want to go out, you'll manage to go out," said Julia. "Now will you sit down and eat?" A shadow darkened the door; both girls looked up, jaws dropping. Their father! Here! "Julia, I want to talk to you," he said, coming in, and for once ignoring Julilla, his favorite. "Oh, tata! Not even a good-morning kiss?" asked his favorite, pouting. He glanced at her absently, pecked her on the cheek, and then recollected himself enough to give her a smile. "If you can find something to do, my butterfly, how about doing it?" Her face was transformed into joy. "Thank you, tata, thank you! May I go to the flower market? And the Porticus Margaritaria?" "How many pearls are you going to buy today?" her tata asked, smiling. "Thousands!" she cried, and skipped out. As she passed him, Caesar slipped a silver denarius into her left hand. "Not the price of the littlest pearl, I know, but it might buy you a scarf," he said. "Tata! Oh, thank you, thank you!" cried Julilla, her arms sliding about his neck, her lips smacking his cheek. Then she was gone. ' Caesar looked very kindly at his older daughter. "Sit down, Julia," he said. She sat expectantly, but he said nothing more until Marcia came in and ranged herself on the couch alongside her daughter. "What is it, Gaius Julius?" asked Marcia, curious but not apprehensive. He didn't sit, stood shifting his weight from one foot to the other, then turned the full beauty of his blue eyes upon Julia. "My dear, did you like Gaius Marius?" he asked. "Why yes, tata, I did." "For what reasons?" She considered the question carefully. "His plain but honest speaking, I think. And his lack of affectation. He confirmed what I have always suspected." "Oh?" "Yes. About the gossip one is always hearing that he has no Greek, that he's a shocking oaf from the country, that his military reputation was got at the expense of others and the whim of Scipio Aemilianus. It always seemed to me that people talked too much you know, too spitefully and constantly for any of it to have been true. After meeting him, I'm sure I'm right. He's not an oaf, and I don't even think he acts like a rustic. He's very intelligent! And very well read. Oh, his Greek isn't very beautiful on the ear, but it's only his accent at fault. His construction and vocabulary are excellent. Just like his Latin. I thought his eyebrows were terrifically distinguished, didn't you? His taste in clothing is a bit ostentatious, but I expect that's his wife's fault." At which point Julia ran down, looking suddenly flustered. "Julia! You really liked him!" said Caesar, a curious note of awe in his voice. "Yes, tata, of course I did," she said, puzzled. "I'm very glad to hear it, because you're going to marry him," blurted Caesar, his famous tact and diplomacy deserting him in this unfamiliar situation. Julia blinked. "Am I?" Marcia stiffened. "Is she?" "Yes," said tata, and found it necessary to sit down. "And just when did you arrive at this decision?" asked Marcia, with a dangerous note of umbrage in her voice. "Where has he seen Julia, to have asked for her?" "He didn't ask for Julia," said Caesar, on the defensive. "I offered him Julia. Or Julilla. That's why I invited him to eat dinner with us." Marcia was now staring at him with an expression on her face that clearly questioned his sanity. "You offered a New Man closer to your own age than our daughter's his choice of either of our daughters as his wife?" she asked, angry now. "Yes, I did." "Why?" "Obviously you know who he is." "Of course I know who he is!" "So you must know he's one of the richest men in Rome?" "Yes!" "Look, girls," said Caesar seriously, lumping wife in with daughter, "you both know what we're facing. Four children, and not enough property or money to do the right thing by any of them. Two boys with the birth and the brains to go all the way to the top, and two girls with the birth and the beauty to marry only the best. But no money! No money for the cursus honorum, and no money for dowries." "Yes," said Marcia flatly. Because her father had died before she-attained marriageable age, his children by his first wife had combined with the executors of his estate to make sure there was nothing worthwhile left for her. Gaius Julius Caesar had married her for love, and since she had only a tiny dowry, her family had been glad to assent to the union. Yes, they had married for love and it had rewarded them with happiness, tranquillity, three extremely well adjusted children, and one gorgeous butterfly. But it had never ceased to humiliate Marcia that in marrying her, Caesar did no good financially. "Gaius Marius needs a patrician wife of a family whose integrity and dignitas are as impeccable as its rank," Caesar explained. "He ought to have been elected consul three years ago, but the Caecilius Metelluses made sure he wasn't, and as a New Man with a Campanian wife, he doesn't have the family connections to defy them. Our Julia will force Rome to take Gaius Marius seriously. Our Julia will endow him with rank, enhance his dignitas his public worth and standing will rise a thousandfold. In return, Gaius Marius has undertaken to ease our financial difficulties." "Oh, Gaius!" said Marcia, eyes filling with tears. "Oh, Father!" said Julia, eyes softening. Now that he could see his wife's anger dissipating and his daughter beginning to glow, Caesar relaxed. "I noticed him at the inauguration of the new consuls the day before yesterday. The odd thing is that I've never really paid him any attention before, even when he was praetor, nor when he ran unsuccessfully for consul. But on New Year's Day, I perhaps it would not be an exaggeration to say that the scales fell from before my eyes. I knew he was a great man! I knew Rome is going to need him. Just when I got the idea to help myself by helping him, I don't quite know. But by the time we entered the temple and stood together, it was there in my mind, fully formed. So I took the chance, and invited him to dine." "And you really did proposition him, not the other way around?" asked Marcia. "I did." "Our troubles are over?" "Yes," said Caesar. "Gaius Marius may not be a Roman of Rome, but in my opinion he's a man of honor. I believe he'll hew to his side of our bargain." "What was his side of the bargain?" asked the practical mother, mentally reaching for her abacus. "Today he will give me four million sesterces in cash to buy that land next door to ours at Bovillae. Which means that young Gaius will have enough property to ensure him a seat in the Senate without my needing to touch Sextus's inheritance. He will assist both of our boys to become curule aediles. He will assist both of our boys to do whatever they have to do in order to be elected consuls when their times come. And though we didn't discuss the details, he will dower Julilla handsomely." "And what will he do for Julia?" asked Marcia crisply. Caesar looked blank. "Do for Julia?" he echoed. "What more can he do for Julia than to marry her? There's no dowry going with her, after all, and it's certainly costing him a large fortune to make her his wife." "Normally a girl has her dowry to make sure she retains a measure of financial independence after her marriage, especially in the event that she is divorced. Though some women are fools enough to hand their dowries over to their husbands, by no means all women do, and it has to be found when the marriage is over even if the husband has had the use of it. I insist that Gaius Marius dower Julia to a degree that will make sure she has enough to live on if at any time he divorces her," said Marcia, in a tone which brooked no argument. "Marcia, I can't ask the man for more!" said Caesar. "I'm afraid you must. In fact, I'm astonished you didn't think of it for yourself, Gaius Julius." Marcia heaved a sigh of exasperation. "I never can understand why the world labors under the fallacious belief that men have better business heads than women! They don't, you know. And you, my dear husband, are woollier in business matters than most men! Julia is the whole cause of our change in fortune, so we owe it to her to guarantee her future too." "I admit you're right, my dear," said Caesar hollowly, "but I really can't ask the man for more!" Julia looked from mother to father and back to mother; this was not the first time she had seen them differ, of course, especially over money matters, but it was the first time she had been the central issue, and it distressed her. So she put herself verbally between them by saying, "It's all right, truly it is! I'll ask Gaius Marius about a dowry myself, I'm not afraid to. He'll understand." "Julia! You want to marry him!" gasped Marcia. "Of course I do, Mama. I think he's wonderful!" "My girl, he's just about thirty years older than you are! You'll be a widow before you know it." “Young men are boring, they remind me of my brothers. I would much rather marry someone like Gaius Marius," said the scholarly daughter. "I'll be good to him, I promise. He will love me, and never regret the expense." "Whoever would have thought it?" asked Caesar, of no one in particular. "Don't be so surprised, tata. I'll be eighteen soon, I knew you would be arranging a marriage for me this year, and I must confess I've been dreading the prospect. Not marriage itself, exactly just who my husband would be. Last night when I met Gaius Marius, I- I thought to myself immediately, wouldn't it be lovely if you found me someone like him?" Julia blushed. "He isn't a bit like you, tata, and yet he is like you I found him fair, and kind, and honest." Gaius Julius Caesar looked at his wife. "Isn't it a rare pleasure to discover that one genuinely likes one's child? To love one's child is natural. But liking? Liking has to be earned," he said.
Two encounters with women in the same day unnerved Gaius Marius more than the prospect of fighting an enemy army ten times bigger than his own. One encounter was his first meeting with his intended bride and her mother; the other was his last meeting with his present wife. Prudence and caution dictated that he interview Julia before he saw Grania, to make sure there were no unforeseen hitches. So at the eighth hour of the day midafternoon, that is he arrived at the house of Gaius Julius Caesar, clad this time in his purple-bordered toga, unaccompanied and unburdened by the massive weight of a million silver denarii; the sum amounted to 10,000 pounds in weight, and that was 160 talents, or 160 men carrying a full load. Luckily "cash" was a relative term; Gaius Marius brought a bank draft. In Gaius Julius Caesar's study he passed his host a small, rolled-up piece of Pergamum parchment. "I've done everything as discreetly as possible," he said as Caesar unfurled the parchment and scanned the few lines written on it. "As you see, I've arranged for the deposit of two hundred talents of silver in your name with your bankers. There's no way the deposit can be traced to me without someone's wasting a good deal more of his time than any firm of bankers would allow for no better reason than to gratify curiosity." "Which is just as well. It would look as if I've accepted a bribe! If I weren't such senatorial small fry, someone in my bank would be sure to alert the urban praetor," said Caesar, letting the parchment curl itself up and placing it to one side. "I doubt anyone has ever bribed with so much, even to a consul with huge clout," said Marius, smiling. Caesar held out his right hand. "I hadn't thought of it in talents," he said. "Ye gods, I asked you for the earth! Are you sure it hasn't left you short?" "Not at all." Marius found himself unable to loosen his fingers from Caesar's convulsive grip. "If the land you want goes for the price you quoted me, then I've given you forty talents too much. They represent your younger daughter's dowry." "I don't know how to thank you, Gaius Marius." Caesar let go Marius's hand at last, looking more and more uncomfortable. "I've kept telling myself I'm not selling my daughter, but at this moment it seems suspiciously like it to me! Truly, Gaius Marius, I wouldn't sell my daughter! I do believe her future with you and the status of her children of your begetting will be illustrious. I believe you'll look after her properly, and treasure her as I want my daughter treasured." His voice was gruff; not for another sum as large could he have done as Marcia wished, and demand yet more as a dowry for Julia. So he got up from behind his desk a little shakily, picking up the piece of parchment more casually than his heart or mind could ever hold it. Then he tucked it into the sinus of his toga, where the toga's folds looped beneath his free right arm and formed a capacious pocket. "I won't rest until this is lodged with my bank." He hesitated, then said, "Julia doesn't turn eighteen until the beginning of May, but I don't wish to delay your marriage until halfway through June, so if you're agreeable we can set the ceremony for some time in April." "That will be acceptable," said Marius. "I had already decided to do that," Caesar went on, more for the sake of talking, filling in the awkward gap his discomfort had created. "It's a nuisance when a girl is born right at the beginning of the only time of year when it's considered bad luck to marry. Though why high spring and early summer should be thought bad luck, I don't know." He shook himself out of his mood. "Wait here, Gaius Marius. I'll send Julia to you." Now it was Gaius Marius's turn to be on edge, apprehensive; he waited in the small but tidy room with a terrifying anxiety. Oh, pray the girl was not too unwilling! Nothing in Caesar's demeanor had suggested she was unwilling, but he knew very well that there were things no one would ever tell him, and he found himself yearning for a truly willing Julia. Yet how could she welcome a union so inappropriate to her blood, her beauty, her youth? How many tears had she shed when the news was broken to her? Did she already hanker after some handsome young aristocrat rendered ineligible by common sense and necessity? An elderly Italian hayseed with no Greek what a husband for a Julia! The door opening onto the colonnade at the house end of the peristyle-garden moved inward, and the sun entered Caesar's study like a fanfare of trumpets, blinding and brassy, golden-low. Julia stood in its midst, her right hand out, smiling. "Gaius Marius," she said with pleasure, the smile clearly starting in her eyes. "Julia," he said, moving close enough to take the hand, but holding it as if he didn't know what to do with it, or what to do next. He cleared his full throat. "Your father has told you?" "Oh, yes." Her smile didn't fade; if anything, it grew, and there was nothing immature or girlishly bashful in her demeanor. On the contrary, she appeared in complete control of herself and the situation, regally poised, a princess in her power, yet subtly submissive. "You don't mind?" he asked abruptly. "I'm delighted," she said, her beautiful grey eyes wide and warm, the smile still in them; as if to reassure him, she curled her fingers around the edge of his palm, and gently squeezed it. "Gaius Marius, Gaius Marius, don't look so worried! I really, truly, honestly am delighted!" He lifted his left hand, encumbered in folds of toga, and took hers between both of his, looking down at its perfect oval nails, its creamy tapered fingers. "I'm an old man!" he said. "Then I must like old men, because I do like you." "You like me?" She blinked. "Of course! I would not otherwise have agreed to marry you. My father is the gentlest of men, not a tyrant. Much and all as he might have hoped I would be willing to marry you, he would never, never have forced me to it." "But are you sure you haven't forced yourself?" he asked. "It wasn't necessary," she said patiently. "Surely there's some young man you like better!" "Not at all. Young men are too like my brothers." "But but " He cast round wildly for some objection, and finally said, "My eyebrows!" "I think they're wonderful," she said. He felt himself blush, helpless to control it, and was thus thrown even further off balance; then he realized that, collected and self-possessed though she was, she was nevertheless a complete innocent, and understood nothing of what he was enduring. "Your father says we may marry in April, before your birthday. Is that all right?" he asked. She frowned. "Well, I suppose so, if that's what he says. But I'd rather put it forward to March, if you and he agree. I'd like to be married on the festival of Anna Perenna." An appropriate day yet an unlucky one too. The feast of Anna Perenna, held on the first full moon after the beginning of March, was all tied up with the moon, and the old New Year. In itself the feast day was lucky, but the day following if was not. "Don't you fear starting your first proper day of marriage with poor omens?" he asked. "No," said Julia. "There are none but good omens in marrying you." She put her left hand beneath his right so that they were handfast, and looked up at him gravely. "My mother has only given me a very short time to be alone with you," she said, "and there is one matter we must clarify between us before she comes in. My dowry." Now her smile did fade, replaced by a look of serious aloofness. "I do not anticipate an unhappy relationship with you, Gaius Marius, for I see nothing in you to make me doubt your temper or your integrity, and you will find mine all they should be. If we can respect each other, we will be happy. However, my mother is adamant about a dowry, and my father is most distressed at her attitude. She says must be dowered in case you should ever decide to divorce me. But my father is already overwhelmed by your generosity, and loath to ask you for more. So I said I would ask, and I must ask before mama comes in. Because she's bound to say something." There was no cupidity in her gaze, only concern. "Would it perhaps be possible to lay a sum aside on the understanding that if, as I expect, we find no need to divorce, it will be yours as well as mine? Yet if we do divorce, it would be mine." What a little lawyer she was! A true Roman. All so very carefully phrased, gracefully inoffensive, yet crystal-clear. "I think it's possible," he said gravely. "You must be sure I can't spend it while I'm married to you," she said. "That way, you'll know I'm honorable." "If that's what you want, that's what I'll do," he said. "But it isn't necessary to tie it up. I'm quite happy to give you a sum now in your own name, to do with as you please.'' A laugh escaped her. "Just as well you chose me and not Julilla! No, thank you, Gaius Marius. I prefer the honorable way," she said gently, and lifted her face. "Now will you kiss me before my mother comes?" Her demand for a dowry hadn't discomposed him one bit, where this demand certainly did. Suddenly he understood how vitally important it was that he do nothing to disappoint her or, worse still, give her a distaste for him. Yet what did he know about kisses, about lovemaking? His self-esteem had never required reassurances from his infrequent mistresses as to his competence as a lover, because it had never really mattered to him what they thought of his lovemaking or his kisses; nor did he have the faintest idea what young girls expected from their first lovers. Ought he to grab her and kiss her passionately, ought he to make this initial contact chastely light? Lust or respect, since love was at best a hope for the future? Julia was an unknown quantity, he had no clue as to what she expected or what she wanted. All he did know was that pleasing her mattered greatly to him. In the end he stepped closer to her without releasing her hands, and leaned his head down, not a very long way, for she was unusually tall. Her lips were closed and cool, soft and silky; natural instinct solved his dilemma for him when he shut his eyes and simply put himself on the receiving end of whatever she cared to offer. It was a totally new experience for her, one she desired without knowing what it would bring her, for Caesar and Marcia had kept their girls sheltered, refined, ignorant, yet not unduly inhibited. This girl, the scholarly one, had not developed along the lines of her young sister, but she was not incapable of strong feeling. The difference between Julia and Julilla was one of quality, not capacity. So when her hands struggled to be free, he let go of them at once, and would have moved away from her had she not immediately lifted her arms and put them round his neck. The kiss warmed. Julia opened her lips slightly, and Marius employed his empty hands in holding her. Vast and many-folded, the toga prevented too intimate a contact, which suited them both; and the moment came quite naturally when this exquisite form of exploration found a spontaneous ending. Marcia, entering noiselessly, could fault neither of them, for though they were embraced, his mouth was against her cheek, and she seemed, eyelids lowered, as satisfied yet unassailed as a cat discreetly stroked in just the right way. Neither of them confused, they broke apart and turned to face the mother who looked, thought Marius, distinctly grim. In her, not as ancient an aristocrat as the Julius Caesars, Marius sensed a certain grievance, and understood that Marcia would have preferred Julia to marry someone of her own class, even if it had meant no money came into the family. However, his happiness at that moment was complete; he could afford to overlook the umbrage of his future mother-in-law, some two years younger than he was himself. For in truth she was right: Julia belonged to someone younger and better than an elderly Italian hayseed with no Greek. Which was not to say that he intended for one moment to change his mind about taking her! Rather, it was up to him to demonstrate to Marcia that Julia was going to the best man of all. "I asked about a dowry, Mama," said Julia at once,' "and it's all arranged." Marcia did have the grace to look uncomfortable. "That was my doing," she said, "not my daughter's or my husband's." "I understand," he said pleasantly. "You have been most generous. We thank you, Gaius Marius." "I disagree, Marcia. It's you who've been most generous. Julia is a pearl beyond price," said Marius.
A statement which stuck in his mind, so that when he left the house shortly after and found the tenth hour of daylight still in the lap of the future, he turned at the foot of the Vestal Steps to the right rather than to the left, and skirted the beautiful little round temple of Vesta to walk up the narrow defile between the Regia and the Domus Publicus. Which brought him out onto the Via Sacra at the foot of the little incline called the Clivus Sacer. He strode up the Clivus Sacer briskly, anxious to reach the Porticus Margaritaria before the traders all went home. This big, airy shopping arcade built around a central quadrangle contained Rome's best jewelers. It had got its name from the pearl sellers who had established quarters in it when it had been newly erected; at that time the defeat of Hannibal had seen all the stringent sumptuary laws forbidding women to wear jewelry repealed, and in consequence the women of Rome spent wildly on every kind of gewgaw. Marius wanted to buy Julia a pearl, and knew exactly where to go, as did all who lived in Rome: the firm of Fabricius Margarita. The first Marcus Fabricius had been the first of all the pearl vendors, and set up his shop when what pearls there were came from freshwater mussels, bluff and rock and mud oysters, and the sea pen, and were small and mostly dark in color. But Marcus Fabricius made such a specialty of pearls that he followed like a sniffer-hound down the tracks of legends, journeyed to Egypt and Arabia Nabataea in search of ocean pearls and found them. In the beginning they had been still disappointingly small and irregular in shape, but they did have the true cream-white pearl color, and came from the waters of the Sinus Arabicus, far down near Aethiopia. Then as his name became known, he discovered a source of pearls from the seas around India and the pear-shaped island of Taprobane just below India. At which point he gave himself the last name of Margarita and established a monopoly of ocean pearl trade. Now, in the time of the consulship of Marcus Minucius Rufus and Spurius Postumius Albinus, his grandson another Marcus Fabricius Margarita was so well stocked that a rich man might be fairly sure if he went to Fabricius Margarita that he would find a suitable pearl in the shop right there and then. Fabricius Margarita did indeed have a suitable pearl on hand, but Marius walked home without it, electing to have its perfect marble-sized roundness and moonlit color set upon a heavy gold necklace surrounded by smaller pearls, a process which would consume some days. The novelty of actually wanting to gift a woman with precious things possessed his thoughts, jostling there amid memories of her kiss, her willingness to be his bride. A great philanderer he was not, but he knew enough about women to recognize that Julia did not present the picture of a girl allying herself where she could not give her heart; and the very idea of owning a heart as pure, as young, as blue-blooded as Julia's filled him with the kind of gratitude that cried out to shower her with precious things. Her willingness he saw as a vindication, an omen for the future; she was his pearl beyond price, so to her must come pearls, the tears of a distant tropical moon that fell into the deepest ocean and, in sinking to its bottom, froze solid. And he would find her an Indian adamas stone harder than any other substance known and as big as a hazelnut, and a wonderful green smaragdus stone with blue flickers in its heart, all the way from northern Scythia . . . and a carbunculus stone, as bright and glistening as a blister full of new blood …
Crania was in, of course. When was she ever out? Waiting every day from the ninth hour onward to see if her husband would come home for dinner, postponing the meal a few minutes only at a time, she drove her appallingly expensive cook mad, and all too often ended in sniffling her way through a solitary repast designed to revive the vanished appetite of a glutton emerging from a fasting cure. The culinary masterpiece produced by the artiste in the kitchen was always, always wasted, whether Marius dined out or at home; for Crania had outlaid a fortune for a cook qualified to cast the most discriminating Epicure into ecstasies. When Marius did stay home to dinner he was faced with fare like dormice stuffed with foie gras, the tiniest fig-pecker birds daintied beyond imagination, exotic vegetables and pungent arrays of sauces too rich for his tongue and his belly, if not his purse. Like most Military Men, he was happiest with a hunk of bread and a bowl of pease-pottage cooked with bacon, and didn't care if he missed a meal or two anyway. Food was fuel for the body to him, not fuel for pleasure. That after so many years of marriage Grania had still not worked this out for herself was symptomatic of the vast distance between them. What Marius was about to do to Grania did not sit well with him, scant though his affection for her was. Their relationship had always been tinged with guilt on his side, for he was well aware that she had come to their marriage looking forward to a life of connubial bliss, cozy with children and shared dinners, a life centered on Arpinum, but with lots of trips to Puteoli, and perhaps a two-week holiday in Rome during the ludi Romani every September. But from first sight of her to first night of her, she had left him so utterly unmoved that he couldn't even begin to counterfeit liking and desire. It wasn't that she was ugly, she wasn't; her round face was pleasant enough, it had even been described to him as beautiful, with its large well-opened eyes and small full mouth. It wasn't that she was a termagant, she wasn't; in fact, her behavior was tailored to please him in every way she knew. The trouble was, she couldn't please him, not if she filled his cup with Spanish fly and took one of the fashionable courses in lascivious dancing. Most of his guilt stemmed from his knowledge that she did not have the faintest idea why she couldn't please him, even after many painful quizzes on the subject; he was never able to give her satisfactory answers, because he honestly didn't know why himself, and that was the real trouble. For the first fifteen years she had made a praiseworthy attempt to keep her figure, which was not at all bad full of breast, small of waist, swell of hip and brushed her dark hair dry in the sun after washing it, to give it plenty of lustrous red highlights; and outlined her soft brown eyes with a black line of stibium; and made sure she never stank of sweat or menses. If there was a change in him on this evening in early January when the door servant admitted him to his house, it was that he had finally found a woman who did please him, with whom he looked forward to marriage, a shared life. Perhaps in contrasting the two, Crania and Julia, he could find the elusive answer at last? And immediately he saw it. Grania was pedestrian, untutored, wholesome, domestic, the ideal wife for a Latin squire. Julia was aristocratic, scholarly, stately, political, the ideal wife for a Roman consul. In affiancing him to Grania, his family had naturally assumed he would lead the life of a Latin squire, this being the heritage of his blood, and chosen his wife accordingly. But Gaius Marius was an eagle, he flew the Arpinate coop. Adventurous and ambitious, formidably intelligent, a no-nonsense soldier who yet had vast imagination, he had come far and intended to go farther still, especially now he was promised a Julia of the Julius Caesars. She was the kind of wife he wanted! The kind of wife he needed. "Grania!" he called, dropping the huge bulk of his toga on the magnificent mosaic floor of the atrium and stepping out of it before the servant scurrying to retrieve it could get there and save its whiteness from contact with the soles of Gaius Marius's muddy boots. "Yes, dear?" She came running from her sitting room with pins and brooches and crumbs littering her wake, far too plump these days, for she had long learned to console her bitter loneliness with too many sweetmeats and syruped figs. "In the tablinum, please," he flung over his shoulder as he strode toward the room. Pattering quickly, she entered on his heels. "Shut the door," he said, moving to where his favorite chair stood behind his big desk, seating himself in it, and thus compelling her to sit like a client on the opposite side of a great expanse of polished malachite edged with tooled gold. "Yes, dear?" she asked, not fearfully, for he was never intentionally rude to her, nor did he ever ill-treat her in any way other than through the medium of neglect. He frowned, turning an ivory abacus over between his hands; hands she had always loved, for they were as graceful as they were strong, square of palm but long of finger, and he used them like an expert, firmly decisive. Head on one side, she stared at him, the stranger to whom she had been married for twenty-five years. A fine-looking man, was her verdict now, no different from a thousand other verdicts. Did she love him still? How could she know? After twenty-five years, what she had come to feel was a complicated fabric with absolutely no pattern to it, so airy in some places the light of her mind shone through it, yet so dense in others that it hung like a curtain between her thoughts and her vague idea of who and what Grania the person was. Rage, pain, bewilderment, resentment, grief, self-pity oh, so many, many emotions! Some felt so long ago they were almost forgotten, others fresh and new because she was now forty-five years old, her menses were dwindling, her poor unfruitful womb shrinking. If one emotion had come to dominate, it was ordinary, depressing, uninspiring disappointment; these days she even offered to Vediovis, the patron god of disappointments. Marius's lips opened to speak; by nature they were full and sensuous, but he had already disciplined them to the contours of strength before she had met him. Grania leaned a little forward to hang upon what he would say, every fiber of her being strung to twanging point with the effort of concentrating. "I am divorcing you," he said, and handed her the scrap of parchment upon which early this morning he had written the bill of divorcement. What he said hardly penetrated; she spread the thick and slightly smelly rectangle of supple skin out on the surface of his desk and studied it presbyopically until its words kindled a response. Then she looked from parchment to husband. "I have done nothing to deserve this," she said dully. "I disagree," he said. "What? What have I done?" "You have not been a suitable wife." "And it has taken you all of twenty-five years to come to this conclusion?" "No. I knew it from the beginning." "Why didn't you divorce me then?" "It didn't seem important at the time." Oh, one hurt after another, one insult after another! The parchment vibrated in her grasp, she flung it away and clenched her hands into hard little fists. "Yes, that's about the sum of it!" she said, finally alive enough to be angry. "I never have been important to you. Not even important enough to divorce. So why are you doing it now?" "I want to marry again," he said. Incredulity drove out rage; her eyes widened. "You?" "Yes. I've been offered a marriage alliance with a girl of a very old patrician house." "Oh, come, Marius! The great despiser, turned snob?" "No, I don't believe so," he said dispassionately, concealing his discomfort as successfully as his guilt. "Simply, this marriage means I will be consul after all." The fire of indignation in her died, snuffed out by the cold wind of logic. How could one argue against that? How could one blame? How could one fight anything so inevitable? Though never once had he discussed his political rejection with her, nor complained of how lightly they held him, she knew it just the same. And had wept for him, burned for him, wished there were some way she could rectify the sin of their omission, those Roman noblemen who controlled Roman politics. Yet what could she do, a Grania from Puteoli? Wealthy, respectable, unimpeachable as wives went. But utterly lacking in clout, owning no relatives capable of rectifying the injustices doled out to him; if he was a Latin squire, she was a Campanian merchant's daughter, lowest of the low in a Roman nobleman's eyes. Until recently, her family hadn't held the citizenship. "I see," she said tonelessly. And he was merciful enough to leave it at that, not to hint to her of his excitement, the glowing little kernel of love busy germinating in his dormant heart. Let her think it was purely a match of political expediency. "I am sorry, Grania," he said gently. "So am I, so am I," she said, starting to shake again, but this time with the chill prospect of grass widowhood, an even greater and more intolerable loneliness than the kind she was used to. Life without Gaius Marius? Unthinkable. "If it's any consolation, the alliance was offered to me, I didn't actively seek it." "Who is she?" "The elder daughter of Gaius Julius Caesar." "A Julia! That is looking high! You'll certainly be consul, Gaius Marius." "Yes, I think so too." He fiddled with his favorite reed pen, the little porphyry bottle of blotting sand with its perforated gold cap, the inkwell made from a chunk of polished amethyst. "You have your dowry, of course, and it's more than adequate to meet your requirements. I invested it in more profitable enterprises than your father had, and since you've never touched it, it's now very large indeed." He cleared his throat. "I presume you'll want to live closer to your own family, but I wonder if at your age it's not advisable to have your own house, especially with your father dead, and your brother the paterfamilias." "You never slept with me often enough to give me a child," she said, aching to her core in the midst of this icy solitude. "Oh, I wish I had a child!" "Well, I'm damned glad you don't! Our son would be my heir, and the marriage to Julia couldn't have its significance." He realized that didn't sound the proper note, and added, "Be sensible, Grania! Our children would be grown up by now, and living lives of their own. No comfort to you at all." "There'd at least be grandchildren," she said, the tears starting to gather. "I wouldn't be so terribly alone!" "I have been telling you for years, get yourself a little lapdog!" It wasn't said unkindly, it was merely sound advice; he thought of better advice still, and added, "What you ought to do is marry again, actually." "Never!" she cried. He shrugged. "Have it your own way. Getting back to whereabouts you should live, I'm willing to buy a villa on the sea at Cumae and install you in it. Cumae's a comfortable distance by litter from Puteoli close enough to visit your family for a day or two, far enough away to assure you peace." Hope had gone. "Thank you, Gaius Marius." "Oh, don't thank me!" He got up and came round the desk to help her to her feet with an impersonal hand under her elbow. "You had better tell my steward what's happening, and think about which slaves you want to take with you. I'll have one of my agents find a suitable villa at Cumae tomorrow. I'll keep it in my name, of course, but I'll deed you a life tenancy or until you marry. All right, all right! I know you said you wouldn't, but enterprising suitors will smother you like flies a honey-pot. You're wealthy." They had reached the door of her sitting room, and there he stopped, taking his hand away. "I'd appreciate it if you'd be out of here the day after tomorrow. In the morning, preferably. I imagine Julia will want to make changes to the house before she moves in, and we're to marry in eight weeks, which doesn't give me long to make whatever changes she wants. So the morning of the day after tomorrow. I can't bring her here to inspect the place until you've gone, it wouldn't be proper." She started to ask him something, anything but he was already walking away. "Don't wait dinner for me," he called as he crossed the vast expanse of the atrium. "I'm going to see Publius Rutilius, and I doubt I'll be back before you're in bed." Well, that was that. It wouldn't break her heart to lose her occupancy of this huge barn of a house; she had always hated it, and hated the urban chaos of Rome. Why he had chosen to live on the damp and gloomy northern slope of the Arx of the Capitol had always puzzled her, though she knew the site's extreme exclusivity had operated powerfully upon him. But there were so few houses in the vicinity that visiting friends meant long walks up many steps, and it was a residential political backwater; the neighbors, such as they were, were all terrific merchant princes with little interest in politics. She nodded at the servant standing by the wall outside her sitting room. "Please fetch the steward at once," she said. The steward came, a majestic Greek from Corinth who had managed to get himself an education and then sold himself into slavery in order to make his fortune and eventually acquire the Roman citizenship. "Strophantes, the master is divorcing me," she said without shame, for there was no shame attached. "I must be gone from here by the day after tomorrow, in the morning. Please see to my packing." He bowed, hiding his amazement; this was one marriage he had never expected to see terminate sooner than death, for it had a mummified torpor about it rather than the kind of bitter warfare which usually led to divorce. "Do you intend to take any of the staff, domina?" he asked, sure of his own continuance in this house, for he belonged to Gaius Marius, not to Grania. "The cook, certainly. All the kitchen servants, otherwise he'll be unhappy, won't he? My serving girls, my seamstress, my hairdresser, my bath slaves, and both the page boys," she said, unable to think of anyone else she depended upon and liked. "Certainly, domina." And he went away at once, dying to impart this fabulous piece of gossip to the rest of the staff, and especially looking forward to breaking the news of his move to the cook; that conceited master of the pots wouldn't welcome the exchange of Rome for Puteoli! Grania wandered into her spacious sitting room and looked around at its comfortable air of dishevelment, at her paints and workbox, at the nail-studded trunk in which reposed her baby trousseau, hopefully gathered, heartbreakingly unused. Since no Roman wife chose or bought the furniture, Gaius Marius would not be handing any of it over; her eyes brightened a little, the tears trickled inward instead of down her cheeks, and were not replaced. Really, she had only tomorrow before leaving Rome, and Cumae was not one of the world's greatest emporiums. Tomorrow she would go shopping for furniture to fill her new villa! How nice to be able to pick what she wanted! Tomorrow would be busy after all, no time for thinking, no empty hours to grieve. Much of the sting and shock began at once to evaporate; she could get through the coming night, now that she had a shopping spree to look forward to. '' Berenice!'' she called, and then, when the girl appeared, "I'll dine now, tell the kitchen." She found paper on which to compose her shopping list amid the clutter on her worktable, and left it where it sat ready for her to use as soon as she finished eating. And something else he had said to her yes, that was it, the little lapdog. Tomorrow she would buy a little lapdog, first item on the list. The euphoria lasted until Crania's solitary dinner was almost done, at which point she emerged from shock and promptly plunged into grief. Up went both hands to her hair, wrenching and pulling frenziedly; her mouth opened in a keening wail, the tears poured out in rivers. Every servant scattered, leaving her abandoned in the dining room to howl into the gold-and-purple tapestry covering her couch. "Just listen to her!" said the cook bitterly, pausing in his packing-up of special pans, pots, tools; the sound of his mistress's agony came clearly into his domain at the far end of the peristyle-garden. "What's she got to cry about? I'm the one going into exile she's been there for years, the fat silly old sow!"
5
The lot which gave the province of Roman Africa to Spurius Postumius Albinus was drawn on New Year's Day; not twenty-four hours later, he nailed his colors to the mast, and they were the colors of Prince Massiva of Numidia. Spurius Albinus had a brother, Aulus, ten years younger than himself, newly admitted to the Senate, and eager to make a name. So while Spurius Albinus lobbied strenuously yet behind the scenes for his new client Prince Massiva, it fell to Aulus Albinus to escort Prince Massiva through all the most important public places of the city, introducing him to every Roman of note, and whispering to Massiva's agents what sort of gift would be appropriate to send to every Roman of note Massiva met. Like most members of the Numidian royal house, Massiva was a well-set-up and good-looking Semite with a brain between his ears, capable of exerting charm, and lavish in the distribution of largesse. His chief advantage lay not in the undeniable legitimacy of his claim, but rather in the Roman delight of a divided camp; there was no thrill in a united Senate, no spice in a series of unanimous votes, no reputations to be made in amicable co-operation. At the end of the first week of the New Year, Aulus Albinus formally presented the case of Prince Massiva to the House, and, on his behalf, claimed the throne of Numidia for the legitimate branch. It was Aulus Albinus' s maiden speech, and a good one. Every Caecilius Metellus sat up and listened, then applauded at the end of it, and Marcus Aemilius Scaurus was delighted to speak in support of Massiva's petition. This, he said, was the answer to the vexed question as to what to do about Numidia get it back on the right path with a lawful king at the reins, not a desperate pretender whose bloodline was not good enough to unite the whole country behind him, and who had established his tenure of the throne by murder and bribery. Before Spurius Albinus dismissed the meeting, the Senate was making noises indicating it was very ready to vote in favor of dismissing the present King, and replacing him with Massiva. "We're up to our necks in boiling water," said Bomilcar to Jugurtha. "All of a sudden I'm not being invited to dine anywhere, and our agents can't find any ears prepared to listen." "When is the Senate going to vote?" asked the King, his voice calm and steady. "The fourteenth day before the Kalends of February is the next meeting scheduled for the House that is seven days from tomorrow, sire." The King straightened his shoulders. "It will go against me, won't it?" "Yes, sire," said Bomilcar. "In that case, it is pointless my trying to continue to do things the Roman way." Jugurtha was visibly growing in size, an awful majesty swelling him now that had been kept hidden since he came with Lucius Cassius to Italy. "From now on, I will do things my way the Numidian way." The rain had cleared, a cold sun shone; Jugurtha's bones longed for the warmer winds of Numidia, his body longed for the friendly and unavaricious comfort of his harem, his mind longed for the ruthless logic of Numidian plain dealing. Time to go home! Time to start recruiting and training an army, for the Romans were never going to let go. He paced up and down the colonnade flanking the gigantic peristyle-garden, then beckoned to Bomilcar and strode with him to the center of the open air, by the loudly splashing fountain. "Not even a bird can hear us," he said then. Bomilcar stiffened, prepared himself. "Massiva must go," said the King. "Here? In Rome?" "Yes, and within the next seven days. If Massiva is not dead before the Senate takes its vote, our task will be that much harder. With Massiva dead, there can be no vote. It will buy us time." "I'll kill him myself," said Bomilcar. But Jugurtha shook his head violently. "No! No! The assassin must be a Roman," he said. "Your job is to find the Roman assassin who will kill Massiva for us." Bomilcar stared, aghast. "My lord king, we're in a foreign country! We don' t know where or how, let alone who!" "Ask one of our agents. Surely there's one we can trust," said Jugurtha. That was more concrete; Bomilcar worked at it for some moments, nipping at the short hairs of his beard beneath his bottom lip with strong teeth. "Agelastus," he said at last. "Marcus Servilius Agelastus, the man who never smiles. His father is Roman, he was born and bred here. But his heart is with his Numidian mother, of that I'm sure." "I leave it to you. Do it," said the King, and walked away down the path.
Agelastus looked stunned. "Here? In Rome?" "Not only here, but within the next seven days," said Bomilcar. "Once the Senate votes for Massiva as it will! we'll have a civil war on our hands in Numidia. Jugurtha won't let go, you know that. Even if he were willing to let go, the Gaetuli wouldn't let him." "But I haven't the faintest idea how to find an assassin!" "Then do the job yourself." "I couldn't!" wailed Agelastus. "It has to be done! Surely in a city this size there are plenty of people willing to do murder for a good sum of money," Bomilcar persisted. "Of course there are! Half the proletariat, if the truth is known. But I don't mix in those circles, I don't know any of the proletarii! After all, I can't just approach the first seedy-looking fellow I see, clink a bag of gold at him, and ask him to kill a prince of Numidia!" moaned Agelastus. "Why not?" asked Bomilcar. "He might report me to the urban praetor, that's why!" "Show him the gold first, and I guarantee he won't. In this city, everyone has his price." "Maybe that is indeed so, Baron," said Agelastus, "but I for one am not prepared to put your theory to the test." And from that stand he would not be budged.
Everyone said the Subura was Rome's sink, so to the Subura Bomilcar went, clad inconspicuously, and without a single slave to escort him. Like every visitor of note to Rome, he had been warned never to venture into the valley northeast of the Forum Romanum, and now he understood why. Not that the alleys of the Subura were any narrower than those of the Palatine, nor were the buildings as oppressively high as those on the Viminal and upper Esquiline. No, what distinguished the Subura at first experience was people, more people than Bomilcar had ever seen. They leaned out of a thousand thousand windows screeching at each other, they elbowed their way through presses of bodies so great all movement was slowed to a snail's pace, they behaved in every rude and aggressive manner known to the race of men, spat and pissed and emptied their slops anywhere they fancied they saw a space open up, were ready to pick a fight with anyone who so much as looked at them sideways. The second impression was of an all-prevailing squalor, an appalling stench. As he made his way from the civilized Argiletum to the Fauces Suburae, as the initial stretch of the main thoroughfare was known, Bomilcar was incapable of taking in anything beyond smell and dirt. Peeling and dilapidated, the very walls of the buildings oozed filth in runnels, as if the bricks and timber of which they were made had been mortared with filth. Why, he found himself wondering, hadn't they just let the whole district burn down last year, instead of fighting so hard to save it? Nothing and no one in the Subura was worth saving! Then as he penetrated deeper careful as he walked not to turn off the Subura Major, as the main street was now called, into any of the gaps between the buildings on either side, for he knew if he did, he might never find his way out again disgust was replaced by amazement. For he began to see the vitality and hardiness of the inhabitants, and experience a cheerfulness beyond his comprehension. The language he heard was a bizarre mixture of Latin and Greek and a little Aramaic, an argot which probably couldn't be understood by anyone who didn't live in the Subura, for certainly in his extensive wanderings around the rest of Rome, he had never heard its like. There were shops everywhere, foetid little snack bars all apparently doing a thriving trade there was obviously money around somewhere interspersed with bakeries, charcuteries, wine bars, and curious tiny shoplets which seemed (from what he could ascertain by peering into the gloom within) to sell every kind of thing from pieces of twine to cooking pots to lamps and tallow candles. However, clearly food was the best business to be in; at least two thirds of the shops were devoted to some aspect of the food trade. There were factories too: he could hear the thump of presses or the whir of grinding wheels or the clatter of looms, but these noises came from narrow doorways or from side alleys, and were hopelessly fused with what appeared to be tenement dwellings many storeys high. How did anyone ever survive here? Even the little squares at the major crossroads were solid people; the way they managed to do their washing in the fountain basins and carry pitchers of water home astounded him. Cirta of which city he as a Numidian was inordinately proud he at last admitted was no more than a big village compared to Rome. Even Alexandria, he suspected, might have its work cut out to produce an ants' nest like the Subura. However, there were places in which men gathered to sit and drink and pass the time of day. These seemed to be confined to major crossroads, but even of that he couldn't be sure, unwilling as he was to leave the main street. Everything kept happening very suddenly, in snatches of scenes that opened up before him and closed in a fresh throng of people, from a man beating a laden ass to a woman beating a laden child. But the dim interiors of the crossroads taverns he didn't know what else to call them were oases of relative peace. A big man in the pink of health, Bomilcar finally decided he would find out nothing more illuminating until he ventured inside one. After all, he had come to the Subura to find a Roman assassin, which meant he must find a venue where he could strike up a conversation with some of the local populace. He left the Subura Major to walk up the Vicus Patricii, a main street leading onto the Viminal Hill, and found a crossroads tavern at the base of a triangular open space where the Subura Minor merged into the Vicus Patricii; the size of the shrine and the fountain told him this was a very important compitum, intersection. As he dipped his head to pass under the low lintel of the door, every face inside and there must have been fifty of them lifted and turned toward him, suddenly stony. The buzz of talk died. "I beg your pardon," Bomilcar said, bearing unafraid, eyes busy trying to find the face belonging to the leader. Ah! There in the far left back corner! For as the initial shock of seeing a completely foreign-looking stranger enter wore off, the rest were turning to look at this one face the face of the leader. A Roman rather than a Greek face, the property of a man of small size and perhaps thirty-five years. Bomilcar swung to look directly at him and addressed the rest of his remarks to him, wishing his Latin were fluent enough to speak in the native tongue, but forced to use Greek instead. "I beg your pardon," he said again, "I seem to be guilty of trespass. I was looking for a tavern where I might be seated to drink a cup of wine. It's thirsty work, walking." "This, friend, is a private club," said the leader in atrocious but understandable Greek. "Are there no public taverns?" Bomilcar asked. "Not in the Subura, friend. You're out of your ken. Go back to the Via Nova." "Yes, I know the Via Nova, but I'm a stranger in Rome, and I always think one cannot get the real flavor of a city unless one goes into its most crowded quarter," said Bomilcar, steering a middle course between touristy fatuousness and foreign ignorance. The leader was eyeing him up and down, shrewdly calculating. "Thirsty as all that, are you, friend?" he asked. Gratefully Bomilcar seized upon the gambit. "Thirsty enough to buy everyone here a drink," he said. The leader pushed the man sitting next to him off his stool, and patted it. "Well, if my honorable colleagues agree, we could make you an honorary member. Take the weight off your feet, friend." His head turned casually. "All in favor of making this gent an honorary member, say aye?'' "Aye!" came the chorus. Bomilcar looked in vain for counter or vendor, drew a secret breath, and put his purse on the table so that one or two silver denarii spilled out of its mouth; either they would murder him for its contents, or he was indeed an honorary member. "May I?" he asked the leader. "Bromidus, get the gent and the members a nice big flagon," said the leader to the minion he had unseated to make room for Bomilcar. "Wine bar we use is right next door," he explained. The purse spilled a few more denarii. "Is that enough?" "To buy one round, friend, it's plenty." Out chinked more coins. "How about several rounds?" A collective sigh went up; everyone visibly relaxed. The minion Bromidus picked up the coins and disappeared out the door followed by three eager helpers, while Bomilcar held out his right hand to the leader. "My name is Juba," he said. "Lucius Decumius," said the leader, shaking hands vigorously. "Juba! What sort of name is that?" "It's Moorish. I'm from Mauretania." "Maura–what? Where's it?" "In Africa." "Africa?" Clearly Bomilcar could as easily have said the Land of the Hyperboreans; it would have meant as much or as little to Lucius Decumius. "A long way from Rome," the honorary member explained. "A place far to the west of Carthage." "Oh, Carthage* Why didn't you say so in the first place?" Lucius Decumius turned to stare into this interesting visitor's face intently. "I didn't think Scipio Aemilianus left any of you lot alive," he said. "He didn't. Mauretania isn't Carthage, it's far to the west of Carthage. Both of them are in Africa, is all," said Bomilcar patiently. "What used to be Carthage is now the Roman African province. Where this year's consul is going you know, Spurius Postumius Albinus." Lucius Decumius shrugged. "Consuls? They come and they go, friend, they come and they go. Makes no difference to the Subura, they don't live hereabouts, you comprehend. But just so long as you admit Rome's the top dog in the world, friend, you're welcome in the Subura. So are the consuls." "Believe me, I know Rome is the top dog in the world," said Bomilcar with feeling. "My master King Bocchus of Mauretania has sent me to Rome to ask the Senate to make him a Friend and Ally of the Roman People." "Well, what do you know?" Lucius Decumius remarked idly. Bromidus came back staggering under the weight of a huge flagon, followed by three others similarly burdened, and proceeded to dispense liquid refreshments to all; he started with Decumius, who gave him a wallop on his thigh that hurt. "Here, idiot, got no manners?" he demanded. "Serve the gent who paid for it first, or I'll have your guts." Bomilcar got a brimming beaker within seconds, and lifted it in a toast. "Here's to the best place and the best friends I've found so-far in Rome," he said, and drank the awful vintage with feigned relish. Ye gods, they must have steel intestines! Bowls of food also appeared, pickled vinegary gherkins and onions and walnuts, sticks of celery and slivers of carrots, a stinking mess of tiny salted fish that disappeared in a trice. None of it could Bomilcar eat. "Here's to you, Juba, old friend!" said Decumius. "Juba!" the rest chorused, in high good humor. Within half an hour Bomilcar knew more about the workingman's Rome than he had ever dreamed of knowing, and found it fascinating; that he knew far less about the workingman's Numidia did not occur to him. All the members of the club worked, he discovered, learning that on each successive day a different group of men would use the club's facilities; most of them seemed to get every eighth day off work. About a quarter of the men in the room wore the little conical beanies on the backs of their heads that denoted they were freedmen, freed slaves; to his surprise, Bomilcar ascertained that some of the others were actually still slaves, yet nonetheless appeared to stand in the same stead as the rest of the members, worked in the same sorts of jobs for the same pay and the same hours and the same days off which seemed very strange to him, but obviously was normal in the eyes of everyone else. And Bomilcar began to understand the real difference between a slave and a freeman: a freeman could come and go and choose his place and kind of work as he wanted, whereas a slave belonged to his employer, was his employer's property, so could not dictate his own life. Quite different from slavery in Numidia. But then, he reflected fairly, for he was a fair man, every nation has its different rules and regulations about slaves, no two the same. Unlike the ordinary members, Lucius Decumius was a permanent fixture. "I'm the club custodian," he said, sober as when he had sipped his first mouthful. "What sort of club is it exactly?" Bomilcar asked, trying to eke out his drink as long as he could. "I don't suppose you would know," said Lucius Decumius. "This, friend, is a crossroads club. A proper sodality, a sort of a college, really. Registered with the aediles and the urban praetor, blessed by the Pontifex Maximus. Crossroads clubs go back to the kings, before there was a republic. There's a lot of power in places where big roads cross. The proper compita, I'm talking about, not your little piddlyarse crossings of lanes and alleys. Yes, there's a lot of power in the crossroads. I mean imagine you were a god and you looked down on Rome you'd be a bit muddled if you wanted to chuck a thunderbolt or a dollop of plague, wouldn't you? If you go up onto the Capitol you'll get a good idea of what I mean a heap of red roofs as close together as the tiles in a mosaic. But if you look hard, you can always see the gaps where the big roads cross, the compita like we've got outside these here premises. So if you were a god, that's where you'd chuck your thunderbolt or your dollop of plague, right? Only us Romans are clever, friend. Real clever. The kings worked out that we'd have to protect ourselves at the crossroads. So the crossroads were put under the protection of the Lares, shrines were built to the Lares at every crossroads even before there were fountains. Didn't you notice the shrine against the wall of the club outside? The little tower thingy?" "I did," said Bomilcar, growing confused. "Who exactly are the Lares? More than one god?'' "Oh, there's Lares everywhere hundreds thousands," said Decumius vaguely. "Rome's full of Lares. So's Italy, they say, though I've never been to Italy. I don't know any soldiers, so I can't say if the Lares go overseas with the legions too. But they're certainly here, everywhere they're needed. And it's up to us the crossroads clubs to take good care of our Lares. We keep the shrine in order and the offerings coming, we keep the fountain clean, we move broken-down wagons, dead bodies mostly animals and we shift the rubble when a building falls down. And around the New Year we have this big party, the Compitalia it's called. It only happened a couple of days ago, that's why we're so short on money for wine. We spend our funds and it takes time to save more." "I see," said Bomilcar, who honestly didn't; the old Roman gods were an insoluble mystery to him. "Do you have to fund the party entirely among yourselves?" "Yes and no," said Lucius Decumius, scratching his armpit. ' 'We get some money from the urban praetor toward it, enough for a few pigs to roast depends on who's urban praetor. Some are real generous. Other years they're so stingy their shit don't stink." The conversation veered to curious questions about life in Carthage; it was impossible to get it through their heads that any other place in Africa existed, for their grasp of history and geography seemed to consist of what they gleaned from their visits to the Forum Romanum, not so far from their clubhouse in distance, but a remote place nonetheless. When they did visit the Forum Romanum, it was apparently because political unrest lent it interest and imparted a circusy flavor to Rome's governing center. Their view of Rome's political life was therefore somewhat skewed; its high point seemed to have been during the troubles culminating in the death of Gaius Sempronius Gracchus. Finally the moment arrived. The members had all grown so used to his presence they didn't notice him, and they were besides fuddled from too much wine. Whereas Lucius Decumius was still sober, his alert inquisitive eyes never leaving Bomilcar's face. Not mere chance that this Juba fellow was here among his inferiors; he was after something. "Lucius Decumius," said Bomilcar, leaning his head so close to the Roman that only the Roman could hear, "I have a problem, and I'm hoping you'll be able to tell me how to go about solving it." "Yes, friend?" "My master, King Bocchus, is very rich." "I'd expect he's rich, him being a king." "What worries King Bocchus is his prospect of remaining a king," said Bomilcar slowly. "He's got a problem." "Same problem as yours, friend?" "Exactly the same." "How can I help?" Decumius plucked an onion out of the bowl of assorted pickles on the table and chewed at it reflectively. "In Africa the answer would be simple. The King would simply give an order, and the man who constitutes our problem would be executed.'' Bomilcar stopped, wondering how long it would be before Decumius caught on. "Aha! So the problem's got a name, has he?" "That's right. Massiva." "Sounds a bit more Latin than Juba," Decumius said. "Massiva is a Numidian, not a Mauretanian." The lees of his wine seemed to fascinate Bomilcar, who stirred them into swirls with his finger. "The difficulty is, Massiva is living here in Rome. And making trouble for us." "I can see where Rome makes it difficult," said Decumius, in a tone which lent his remark several different meanings. Bomilcar looked at the little man, startled; here was a brain of subtlety as well as acuity. He took a deep breath. "My share of the problem is made more perilous because I'm a stranger in Rome," he said. "You see, I have to find a Roman who is willing to kill Prince Massiva. Here. In Rome." Lucius Decumius didn't so much as blink. "Well, that's not hard," he said. "It's not?" "Money'll buy you anything in Rome, friend." "Then can you tell me where to go?" asked Bomilcar. "Seek no further, friend, seek no further," said Decumius, swallowing the last of his onion. "I'd cut the throats of half the Senate for the chance to eat oysters instead of onions. How much does the job pay, like?" "How many denarii are in this purse?" Bomilcar emptied it upon the table. "Not enough to kill for." "What about the same amount in gold?" Decumius slapped his thigh hard. "Now you're talking! You have got yourself a deal, friend." Bomilcar's head was spinning, but not from the wine, which he had been surreptitiously pouring on the floor for the last hour. "Half tomorrow, and half after the job is done," he said, pushing the coins back into the maw of the purse. A stained hand with filthy nails arrested him. "Leave this here as evidence of good faith, friend. And come back tomorrow. Only wait outside by the shrine. We'll go to my flat to talk." Bomilcar got up. "I'll be here, Lucius Decumius." As they walked to the door he stopped to look down into the club custodian's ill-shaven face. "Have you ever killed anyone?" he asked. Up went Decumius's right forefinger against the right side of his nose. "A nod is as good as a wink to a blind barber, friend," he said. "In the Subura a man don't boast." Satisfied, Bomilcar smiled at Decumius and walked off into the congestion of the Subura Minor.
Marcus Livius Drusus, who had been consul two years before, celebrated his triumph halfway through the second week of January. Assigned the province of Macedonia for his governorship in the year he was consul and lucky enough to have his command prorogued, he pursued a highly successful border war against the Scordisci, a tribe of clever and well-organized Celts who perpetually harassed Roman Macedonia. But in Marcus Livius Drusus they encountered a man of exceptional ability, and went down heavily. The result had been more beneficial than usual for Rome; Drusus was lucky enough to capture one of the largest Scordisci strongholds and find secreted within it a considerable part of the Scordisci wealth. Most governors of Macedonia celebrated triumphs at the ends of their terms, but everyone agreed Marcus Livius Drusus deserved the honor more than most. Prince Massiva was the guest of the consul Spurius Postumius Albinus at the festivities, and so was given a superb seat inside the Circus Maximus, from which vantage point he watched the long triumphal parade pass through the Circus, marveling as he discovered at first hand what he had always been told, that the Romans had real showmanship, knew better than any other people the art of staging a spectacle. His Greek of course was excellent, so he had understood his pretriumphal briefing, and was up from his seat ready to go before the last of Drusus's legions were out the Capena end of the vast arena. The whole consular party exited through a private door into the Forum Boarium, hurried up the Steps of Cacus onto the Palatine, and redoubled its pace. Steering the straightest course possible, twelve lictors led the way through almost deserted alleys, the hobnailed soles of their winter boots grinding against the cobblestones. Ten minutes after leaving their seats in the Circus Maximus, Spurius Albinus's party clattered down the Vestal Steps into the Forum Romanum, heading for the temple of Castor and Pollux. Here, on the platform at the top of the steps of this imposing edifice, both consuls were to seat themselves and their guests to watch the parade come down the Via Sacra from the Velia toward the Capitol; in order to avoid insulting the triumphator, they had to be in position when the parade appeared. "All the other magistrates and members of the Senate march at the head of the parade," Spurius Albinus had explained to Prince Massiva, "and the year's consuls are always formally invited to march, just as they're invited to the feast the triumphator gives afterward for the Senate inside the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. But it isn't good form for the consuls to accept either invitation. This is the triumphator's great day, and he must be the most distinguished person in the celebrations, have the most lictors. So the consuls always watch from a position of importance, and the triumphator acknowledges them as he passes yet they do not overshadow him." The prince had indicated that he understood, though his extreme foreignness and his lack of exposure to the Romans limited his understanding of the overall picture he was having explained to him. Unlike Jugurtha, he had clung to non-Roman Africa all his life. Once the consular party arrived at the junction of the Vestal Steps with the Via Nova, its onward progress was hindered by massive crowds. Rome had come out in its hundreds of thousands to see Drusus triumph, that astonishing grapevine which penetrated even into the meanest streets of the Subura having assured everyone that Drusus's triumph was going to be among the most splendid. When on duty carrying the fasces within Rome, the lictors wore plain white togas; today their garb rendered them more anonymous than usual, for Rome going to a triumph whitened itself, every last citizen clad in his toga alba instead of just a tunic. In consequence the lictors had trouble forcing a passage for the consular party, which slowed down as the crowds pressed in. By the time it arrived alongside the temple of Castor and Pollux it had virtually disintegrated as a unit, and Prince Massiva, attended by a private bodyguard, lagged behind so badly that he lost all contact with the rest. His sense of exclusivity and his un-Roman royalness stirred him to outrage at the familiar, disrespectful attitude of the hundreds thronging all around him; his bodyguards were elbowed aside, and he himself for a short moment lost sight of them. It was the short moment Lucius Decumius had been waiting for; he struck with unerring accuracy, swift and sure and sudden. Crushed against Prince Massiva by a spontaneous surge of the crowd, he slid his specially sharpened dagger under the left side of the royal rib cage, turned it immediately upward with a brutal twist, let the haft go once he knew the blade was all the way in, and had slipped between a dozen bodies long before the first blood began to flow, or Prince Massiva knew enough to cry out. Indeed, Prince Massiva did not cry out; he simply fell where he was, and by the time his bodyguard had collected itself enough to shove people aside until they could surround their slain lord, Lucius Decumius was halfway across the lower Forum heading for the haven of the Argiletum, merely one droplet in a sea of white togas. A full ten minutes passed before anyone thought to get the news to Spurius Albinus and his brother, Aulus, already installed upon the podium of the temple and unworried by Prince Massiva's nonappearance. Lictors rushed to cordon off the area, the crowd was pushed elsewhere, and Spurius and Aulus Albinus stood looking down at a dead man and ruined plans. "It will have to wait," said Spurius at last. "We cannot offend Marcus Livius Drusus by disturbing his triumph." He turned to the leader of the bodyguard, which in Prince Massiva's case was composed of hired Roman gladiators, and spoke to the man in Greek. "Carry Prince Massiva to his house, and wait there until I can come," he said. The man nodded. A rude stretcher was made from the toga given up by Aulus Albinus, the body rolled onto it and borne away by six gladiators. Aulus took the disaster less phlegmatically than his older brother; to him had fallen the bulk of Massiva's generosity so far, Spurius feeling he could afford to wait for his share until his African campaign saw Massiva installed upon the throne of Numidia. Besides which, Aulus was as impatient as he was ambitious, and anxious to outstrip Spurius age for age. "Jugurtha!" he said through his teeth. "Jugurtha did it!" "You'll never get proof," said Spurius, sighing. They climbed the steps of the temple of Castor and Pollux and resumed their seats just as the magistrates and senators appeared from behind the imposing bulk of the Domus Publicus, the State-owned house in which lived the Vestal Virgins and the Pontifex Maximus. It was a short glimpse only, but within half a moment they hove clearly into view, and the great procession rolled downhill to where the Via Sacra ended alongside the sunken well of the Comitia. Spurius and Aulus Albinus sat looking as if they had nothing on their minds beyond enjoyment of the spectacle and respect for Marcus Livius Drusus.
Bomilcar and Lucius Decumius met with noisy inconspicuousness, standing side by side at the counter of a busy snack bar on the upper corner of the Great Market until each was served a pasty filled with a savory loaf of garlicky sausage, and then moving very naturally aside to stand biting delicately into their goodies, which were very hot. "Nice day for it, friend," said Lucius Decumius. Wrapped in a hooded cloak which concealed his person, Bomilcar let out his breath. "I trust it remains a nice day," he said. "This is one day, friend, that I can guarantee is going to end up perfect," said Lucius Decumius complacently. Bomilcar fumbled beneath his cloak, found the purse holding the second half of Decumius's gold. "You're sure?'' "Sure as a man whose shoe stinks knows he's stepped in a turd," said Decumius. The bag of gold changed hands invisibly. Bomilcar turned to go, heart light. "I thank you, Lucius Decumius," he said. "No, friend, the pleasure's all mine!" And Lucius Decumius stayed right where he was, biting with relish into his pasty until it was gone. "Oysters instead of onions," he said out loud, starting up the Fauces Suburae with a happy spring in his step and the bag of gold safely next to his skin. Bomilcar left the city through the Fontinalis Gate, hurrying faster as the crowds diminished, down onto the Campus Martius. He got inside the front door of Jugurtha's villa without encountering a person he knew, and flung off his cloak gladly. The King had been very kind this day and given every slave in the house time off to see Drusus triumph, and a present of a silver denarius each as well. So there were no alien eyes to witness Bomilcar's return, only the fanatically loyal bodyguards and Numidian servants. Jugurtha was in his usual place, sitting on the loggia one floor up, above the entrance from the street. "It's done," said Bomilcar. The King gripped his brother's arm strongly. "Oh, good man!" he said, smiling. "I'm glad it went so well," said Bomilcar. "He's definitely dead?" "My assassin assures me he is sure as a man whose shoe stinks knows he stepped in a turd." Bomilcar's shoulders heaved with laughter. "A picturesque fellow, my Roman ruffian. But extraordinarily efficient, and quite nerveless." Jugurtha relaxed. "The moment we hear for certain that my dear cousin Massiva is dead, we'd better call a conference with all our agents. We have to press for the Senate's recognition of my tenure of the throne, and for our return home." He grimaced. "I mustn't ever forget that I still have that pathetic professional invalid half brother of mine to contend with, sweet and beloved Gauda."
But there was one who did not appear when the summons came for Jugurtha's agents to assemble at his villa. The moment he learned of the assassination of Prince Massiva, Marcus Servilius Agelastus sought an audience with the consul Spurius Albinus. The consul pleaded through a secretary that he was too busy, but Agelastus stuck to his intention until in desperation the overworked secretary shunted him into the presence of the consul's younger brother, Aulus, who was galvanized when he heard what Agelastus had to say. Spurius Albinus was called, listened impassively as Agelastus repeated his story, then thanked him, took his address and a deposition to be certain, and dismissed him courteously enough to make most men smile; but not Agelastus. "We'll take action through the praetor urbanus, as legally as we can under the circumstances," said Spurius as soon as he was alone with his young brother. "It's too important a matter to let Agelastus lay the charge I'll do that myself but he's vital to our case because he's the only Roman citizen among the lot if you exclude the mysterious assassin. It will be up to the praetor urbanus to decide exactly how Bomilcar will be prosecuted. Undoubtedly he'll consult the full Senate, seeking a directive to cover his arse. But if I see him personally and give it as my legal opinion that the fact of the crime's being committed inside Rome on a day of triumph by a Roman citizen assassin outweighs Bomilcar's noncitizen status why, I think I can allay his fears. Especially if I reinforce the fact that Prince Massiva was the consul's client, and under his protection. It's vital that Bomilcar be tried and convicted in Rome by a Roman court. The sheer audacity of the crime will force Jugurtha's faction in the Senate to keep quiet. You, Aulus, can ready yourself to do the actual prosecuting in whichever court is decided upon. I'll make sure the praetor peregrinus is consulted, as he's normally the man concerned with lawsuits involving noncitizens. He may want to defend Bomilcar, just to keep things legal. But one way or another, Aulus, we are going to finish Jugurtha's chances to win Senate approval for his cause and then see if we can't find another claimant to the throne." "Like Prince Gauda?" "Like Prince Gauda, poor material though he is. After all, he's Jugurtha's legitimate half brother. We'll just make sure Gauda never comes to Rome to plead in person." Spurius smiled at Aulus. "We are going to make our fortunes in Numidia this year, I swear it!" But Jugurtha had abandoned any idea of fighting according to Rome's rules. When the urban praetor and his lictors arrived at the villa on the Pincian Hill to arrest Bomilcar on a charge of conspiracy to murder, for a moment the King was tempted to refuse outright to hand Bomilcar over, and see what happened after that. In the end he temporized by stating that, as neither the victim nor the accused was a Roman citizen, he failed to see what business it was of Rome's. The urban praetor responded by stating that the Senate had decided the accused must answer charges in a Roman court because there was evidence to indicate that the actual assassin procured was certainly a Roman citizen. One Marcus Servilius Agelastus, a Roman knight, had furnished much proof of this, and had sworn on oath that he himself had first been approached to do the murder. "In which case," said Jugurtha, still fighting, "the only magistrate who can arrest my baron is the foreign praetor. My baron is not a Roman citizen, and my place of abode which is also his is outside the jurisdiction of the urban praetor!" "You have been misinformed, sire," said the urban praetor smoothly. "The praetor peregrinus will be concerned, of course. But the imperium of the praetor urbanus extends as far as the fifth milestone from Rome, therefore your villa is within my jurisdiction, not the foreign praetor's. Now please produce Baron Bomilcar." Baron Bomilcar was produced, and hied off at once to the cells of the Lautumiae, where he was to be held pending trial in a specially convened court. When Jugurtha sent his agents to demand that Bomilcar be released on bail or at least that he be confined in the house of a citizen of good standing rather than in the tumbledown chaos of the Lautumiae the request was refused. Bomilcar must remain resident inside Rome's only jail. The Lautumiae had started existence several hundred years earlier as a quarry in the side of the Arx of the Capitol, and now was a haphazard collection of unmortared stone blocks which huddled in the cliff side just beyond the lower Forum Romanum. It could accommodate perhaps fifty prisoners in disgracefully dilapidated cells owning no sort of security; those imprisoned could wander anywhere they liked within its walls, and were kept from wandering out of it only by lictors on guard duty, or, on the rare occasions when someone truly dangerous was imprisoned, by manacles. Since the place was normally empty, the sight of lictors on guard duty was a great novelty; thus Bomilcar's incarceration rapidly became one of Rome's most widely disseminated news items thanks to the lictors, who were not at all averse to gratifying the curiosity of the passersby.
The lowliness of Lucius Decumius was purely social; it most definitely did not extend to his cerebral apparatus, which functioned extremely well. To gain the post of custodian of a crossroads college was no mean feat. So when a tendril of the gossip grapevine thrust its feeler deep into the heart of the Subura, Lucius Decumius put two of his fingers together with two more, and came up with an answer of four fingers. The name was Bomilcar, not Juba, and the nationality was Numidian, not Mauretanian. Yet he knew it was his man at once. Applauding rather than condemning Bomilcar's deceit, off went Lucius Decumius to the Lautumiae cells, where he gained entrance by the simple expedient of grinning widely at the two lictors on door duty before rudely elbowing his way between them. "Ignorant shit!" said one, rubbing his side. "Eat it!" said Decumius, skipping nimbly behind a crumbling pillar and waiting for the grumbles at the door to subside. Lacking any military or civil law-enforcement officers, Rome habitually obliged its College of Lictors to provide members for all kinds of peculiar duties. There were perhaps three hundred lictors all told, poorly paid by the State and therefore very dependent upon the generosity of the men they served; they inhabited a building and small piece of open land behind the temple of the Lares Praestites on the Via Sacra, and found the location satisfactory only because it also lay behind the long and sprawling premises of Rome's best inn, where they could always cadge a drink. Lictors escorted all the magistrates owning imperium and fought for the chance to serve on the staff of a governor going abroad, since they then shared in his share of the spoils and perquisites of office. Lictors represented the thirty divisions of Rome called curiae. And lictors might be called upon to assume guard duty at either the Lautumiae or the Tullianum next door, where those condemned to death waited scant hours for the strangler. Such guard duty was about the least desirable task a lictor could be given by the head man of his group of ten. No tips, no bribes, no nothing. Therefore neither lictor was interested in pursuing Lucius Decumius inside the building; their job description said they were there to guard the door, so that was all they were going to do, by Jupiter. "Yoohoo, friend, where are you?" yelled Decumius in a voice loud enough to be heard by the bankers in the Basilica Porcia. The hairs on Bomilcar's arms and neck rose; he leaped to his feet. This is it, this is the end, he thought, and waited numbly for Decumius to appear escorted by a troop of magistrates and other officials. Decumius duly appeared. But quite alone. When he saw Bomilcar standing stiffly by the outside wall of his cell (which contained an unbarred and unshuttered opening quite large enough for a man to crawl through that Bomilcar hadn't was evidence of his utter mystification at the way Romans thought and acted, for he could not believe the simple truth that prison was a concept alien to the Romans), Decumius smiled at him jauntily and strolled into the doorless room. "Who squealed on you, friend?" he asked, perching his skinny body on a fallen block of masonry. Controlling his tendency to shake, Bomilcar licked his lips. "Well, if it wasn't you before, you fool, it certainly is now!" he snapped. Eyes widening, Decumius stared at him; a slow comprehension was dawning. "Here, here, friend, don't you worry about things like that," he said soothingly. "There's no one to hear us, just a couple of lictors on the door, and that's twenty paces off. I heard you got arrested, so I thought I'd better come and see what went wrong." "Agelastus," said Bomilcar. "Marcus Servilius Agelastus!" "Want me to do the same to him I did to Prince Massiva?" "Look, will you just get out of here?" cried Bomilcar, despairing. "Don't you understand that they'll start to wonder why you've come? If anyone caught a glimpse of your face near Prince Massiva, you're a dead man!" "It's all right, friend, it's all right! Stop worrying no one knows about me, and no one cares a fig that I'm here. This ain't no Parthian dungeon, friend, honest! They only put you in here to throw your boss into fits, that's all. They won't care a whole lot if you do a moonlight flit, it'll just brand you guilty." And he pointed to the gap in the outside wall. "I can't run away," said Bomilcar. "Suit yourself." Decumius shrugged. "Now, what about this Agelastus bird? Want him out of the way? I'll do it for the same price payable on delivery this time; I trust you." Fascinated, Bomilcar came by logical progression to the conclusion that not only did Lucius Decumius believe what he said, but he was undoubtedly correct to do so. If it hadn't been for Jugurtha, he would now have availed himself of that moonlit escape; but if he yielded to the temptation, only the gods knew what might happen to Jugurtha. "You've got yourself another bag of gold," he said. "Where's he live, this fellow who judging by his name, anyway never smiles?" "On the Caelian Hill, in the Vicus Capiti Africae." "Oh, nice new district!" said Decumius appreciatively. "Agelastus must be doing all right for himself, eh? Still, makes him easy to find, living out there where the birds sing louder than the neighbors. Don't worry, I'll do it for you straightaway. Then when your boss gets you out of here, you can pay me. Just send the gold to me at the club. I'll be there to take delivery." "How do you know my boss will get me out of here?" "Course he will, friend! They've only chucked you in here to give him a fright. Couple more days and they'll let him bail you out. But when they do, take my advice and go home as fast as you can. Don't stay around in Rome, all right?" "Leaving the King here at their mercy? I couldn't!" "Course you can, friend! What do you think they'll do to him here in Rome? Knock him on the head and chuck him in the Tiber? No! Never! That's not how they work, friend," said Lucius Decumius the expert counselor. "There's only one thing they'll murder for, and that's their precious Republic. You know, the laws and the Constitution and stuff like that. They might kill the odd tribune of the plebs or two, like they did Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, but they'd never kill a foreigner, not in Rome. Don't you worry about your boss, friend. My bet is, they'll send him home too if you get away." Bomilcar gazed at Decumius in wonder. "And yet, you don't even know where Numidia is!" he said slowly. "You've never been to Italy! How do you know then the workings of Roman noblemen?" "Well, that's different," said Lucius Decumius, getting up from his stone and preparing to depart. "Mother's milk, friend, mother's milk! We all drink it in along with mother's milk. I mean, aside from windfalls like you coming along, where else can a Roman get a thrill except in the Forum when there's no Games? And you don't even have to go there in the flesh to get the thrill. It comes to you, friend. Just like mother's milk." Bomilcar held out his hand. "I thank you, Lucius Decumius. You are the only completely honest man I've met in Rome. I'll have your money sent to you." "Don't forget, now, to the club! Oh, and" his right forefinger went up to touch the right side of his nose "if you've got any friends need a bit of practical help solving their little problems, let 'em know I take on a bit of outside contracting! I like this line of work."
Agelastus died, but since Bomilcar was in the Lautumiae and neither of the lictors thought to connect Decumius with the reason for Bomilcar's imprisonment, the case Spurius and Aulus Albinus were preparing against the Numidian baron weakened. They still possessed the deposition they had extracted from Agelastus, but there was no doubt his absence as chief witness for the prosecution was a blow. Seizing the opportunity the death of Agelastus afforded him, Jugurtha applied again to the Senate for bail for Bomilcar. Though Gaius Memmius and Scaurus argued passionately against its being granted, in the end Baron Bomilcar was released upon Jugurtha's handing over fifty of his Numidian attendants into Roman custody; they were distributed among the households of fifty senators, and Jugurtha was made to give over a large sum of money to the State, ostensibly to pay for the upkeep of his hostages. His cause, of course, was irreparably damaged. However, he had ceased to care, for he knew he had no hope of ever obtaining Roman approval of his kingship. Not because of the death of Massiva, but because the Romans had never intended to approve his kingship. They had been tormenting him for years, making him dance to their tune, and laughing at him behind their hands. So, with or without the consent of the Senate, he was going home. Home to raise an army and begin to train it to fight the legions which were bound to come. Bomilcar fled to Puteoli the moment he was set free, took ship there for Africa, and got away clean. Whereupon the Senate washed its hands of Jugurtha. Go home, they said, giving him back his fifty hostages (but not his money). Get out of Rome, get out of Italy, get out of our lives. The King of Numidia's last sight of Rome was from the top of the Janiculum, which he made his horse climb simply so he could look upon the shape of his fate. Rome. There it lay, rolling and rippling amid its sudden cliff faces, seven hills and the valleys between, a sea of orange-red roof tiles and brightly painted stuccoed walls, the gilded ornaments adorning temple pediments throwing shafts of light in glitters back into the sky, little highways for the gods to use. A vivid and colorful terracotta city, green with trees and grasses where the space permitted. But Jugurtha saw nothing to admire. He looked for a long time, sure he would never see Rome again. "A city for sale," he said then, "and when it finds a buyer, it will vanish in the twinkling of an eye." And turned away toward the Via Ostiensis.
6
Clitumna had a nephew. Since he was her sister’s boy, he did not bear the family name, Clitumnus; his name was Lucius Gavius Stichus, which to Sulla indicated some ancestor of his father's had been a slave. Why else the nickname Stichus? A slave's name, but more than that. Stichus was the archetypal slave's name, the joke name, the butt name. However, Lucius Gavius Stichus insisted his family had earned the name because of their long association with slavery; like his father and his grandfather at least, Lucius Gavius Stichus dealt in slaves, ran a snug little agency for domestic servants situated in the Porticus Metelli on the Campus Martius. It was not a high-flying firm catering to the elite, but rather a well-established business catering to those whose purses did not run to more than three or four slave helpers. Odd, thought Sulla when the steward informed him that the mistress's nephew was in the study, how he collected Gaviuses. There had been his father's boon drinking companion, Marcus Gavius Brocchus, and the dear old grammaticus Quintus Gavius Myrto. Gavius. It wasn't a very common family name, nor one of any distinction. Yet he had known three Gaviuses. Well, the Gavius who had drunk with his father and the Gavius who had given Sulla no mean education aroused feelings in him he did not mind owning; but Stichus was very different. Had he suspected Clitumna was being honored by a visit from her awful nephew he wouldn't have come home, and he stood for a moment in the atrium debating what his next course of action should be flight from the house, or flight to some part of it where Stichus did not stick his sticky beak. The garden. With a nod and a smile for the steward's thoughtfulness in warning him, he bypassed the study and went into the peristyle, found a seat warmed a little by the weak sun, and sat gazing blindly at the dreadful statue of Apollo chasing a Daphne already more tree than dryad. Clitumna loved it, which was why she had bought it. But did the Lord of Light ever have such aggressively yellow hair, or eyes so putridly blue, or skin so cloyingly pink? And how could one admire a sculptor so lost to the criteria of asceticism that he turned all of Daphne's fingers into identical bright green twigs, and all of Daphne's toes into identical murky brown rootlets? The idiot had even he probably considered it his master touch bedaubed poor Daphne's one remaining humanoid breast with a trickle of purple sap oozing from her knotty nipple! To gaze at it blindly was the only way Sulla had managed to preserve the work, when every part of his outraged senses screamed to take an axe to it. "What am I doing here?" he asked poor Daphne, who ought to have looked terrified, and instead only managed to simper. She didn't answer. "What am I doing here?" he asked Apollo. Apollo didn't answer. He put up one hand to press its fingers against his eyes, and closed them, and began the all-too-familiar process of disciplining himself into oh, not exactly acceptance, more a form of grim endurance. Gavius. Think of a different Gavius than Stichus. Think of Quintus Gavius Myrto, who had given him no mean education.
They had met not long after Sulla's seventh birthday, when the skinny but strong little boy had been helping his sodden father home to the single room on the Vicus Sandalarius where they had lived at the time. Sulla Senior collapsed on the street, and Quintus Gavius Myrto had come to the boy's rescue. Together they got the father home, with Myrto, fascinated by Sulla's appearance and the purity of the Latin he spoke, firing questions at him the whole way. As soon as Sulla Senior was tipped onto his straw pallet, the old grammaticus sat himself down on the only chair and proceeded to extricate as much of his family history from him as the boy knew. And ended in explaining that he himself was a teacher, and offering to teach the boy to read and write for nothing. Sulla's plight appalled him: a patrician Cornelius with obvious potential stuck for the rest of his life in penury somewhere amid the stews of the poorest parts of Rome? It didn't bear thinking of. The boy should at least be equipped to earn a living as a clerk or a scribe! And what if by some miracle the Sullan luck changed, and he had the opportunity to espouse his rightful way of life, only to be prevented by illiteracy? Sulla had accepted the offer to be taught, but scorned the gratis element. Whenever he could, he stole enough to slip old Quintus Gavius Myrto a silver denarius or a plump chicken, and when he was a little older, he sold himself to get that silver denarius. If Myrto suspected that these payments were gained at the cost of honor, he never said so; for he was wise enough to understand that in tendering them, the boy was demonstrating the value he placed upon this unexpected chance to learn. So he took the coins with every indication of pleasure and gratitude, and never gave Sulla reason to think that he worried himself sick over how they were come by. To be taught rhetoric and walk in the train of a great advocate of the law courts was a dream Sulla knew he would never attain, which only gave added luster to the humbler efforts of Quintus Gavius Myrto. For thanks to Myrto, he could speak the purest Attic Greek, and acquired at least the basic rudiments of rhetoric. Myrto's library had been extensive, and so Sulla had read his Homer and his Pindar and his Hesiod, his Plato and his Menander and his Eratosthenes, his Euclid and his Archimedes. And he had read in Latin too Ennius, Accius, Cassius Hemina, Cato the Censor. Ploughing through every scroll he could lay his hands on, he discovered a world where his own situation could be forgotten for a few precious hours, a world of noble heroes and great deeds, scientific fact and philosophical fantasy, the style of literature and the style of mathematics. Luckily the only asset his father had not lost long before Sulla was born was his beautiful Latin; thus of his Latin Sulla had no cause to be ashamed, but he also spoke the cant of the Subura perfectly, and a fairly correct yet lower class of Latin which meant he could move through any Roman sphere without comment. Quintus Gavius Myrto's little school had always been held in a quiet corner of the Macellum Cuppedenis, the spice and flower markets which lay behind the Forum Romanum on its eastern side. Since he could not afford premises but must teach in the public domain, Myrto would say, what better place to pound knowledge into thick young Roman skulls than amid the heady perfumes of roses and violets, peppercorns and cinnamon? Not for Myrto a post as live-in tutor to some pampered plebeian pup, nor even the exclusivity of half a dozen knightly scions taught in a proper schoolroom decently cloistered from the racket of the streets. No, Myrto simply had his lone slave set up his high chair and the stools for his students where shoppers would not trip over them, and taught his reading, writing, and arithmetic in the open air amid the cries and bellows and sales pitches of the spice and flower merchants. Had he not been well liked and had he not given a small discount to boys and girls whose fathers owned stalls in the Cuppedenis, he would soon have been intimidated into moving on; but as he was well liked and he did discount his teaching, he was allowed to hold his school in the same corner until he died when Sulla was fifteen. Myrto charged ten sesterces per week per student, and regularly dealt with ten or fifteen children (always more boys than girls, yet he was never without several girls). His income was about five thousand sesterces a year; he paid two thousand of that for a very nice large single room in a house belonging to one of his early students; it cost him about one thousand sesterces a year to feed himself and his elderly but devoted slave quite well, and the rest of his income he spent upon books. If he wasn't teaching because it was a market day or a holiday, he could be found browsing in the libraries and bookshops and publishing houses of the Argiletum, a broad street which ran off the Forum Romanum alongside the Basilica Aemilia and the Senate House. "Oh, Lucius Cornelius," he was wont to say when he got the boy on his own after lessons were over, desperate (though he never let that desperation show) to keep the boy safe, to keep him off the streets, "somewhere in this enormous world a man or a woman has hidden the works of Aristotle! If you only knew how much I long to read that man! Such a volume of work, such a mind imagine it, the tutor of Alexander the Great! They say he wrote about absolutely everything good and evil, stars and atoms, souls and hell, dogs and cats, leaves and muscles, the gods and men, systems of thought and the chaos of mindlessness. What a treat that would be, to read the lost works of Aristotle!" And then he would shrug his shoulders, suck at his teeth in the irritating way he had that all his students for decades had mocked behind his back, strike his hands together in a little smack of frustration, and potter among the lovely leathery smell of book buckets and the acrid reek of best-quality paper. "Nevermind, nevermind," he would say as he went, "I shouldn't complain, when I have my Homer and my Plato." When he died, which he did in the midst of a cold spell after his old slave had slipped on the icy stairs and broken his neck (amazing how when the line between two people is severed like that, thought Sulla at the time, both ends will go), it was easy to see how very well loved he had been. Not for Quintus Gavius Myrto the hideous indignity of a pauper's place in the lime pits beyond the Agger; no, he had a proper procession, professional mourners, a eulogy, a pyre scented with myrrh and frankincense and Jericho balsam, and a handsome stone tomb to house his ashes. The coin was paid to the custodians of the death records at the temple of Venus Libitina, courtesy of the excellent undertaker hired to manage Myrto's funeral. It had been organized and paid for by two generations of students, who wept for him with genuine grief. Sulla had walked dry-eyed and high-headed in the throng which escorted Quintus Gavius Myrto out of the city to the burning place, thrown his bunch of roses into the fierce fire, and paid a silver denarius to the undertaker as his share. But later, after his father had crumpled in a wine-soaked heap and his unhappy sister had tidied things up as decently as she could, Sulla sat in his corner of the room in which the three of them lived at the time, and pondered his unexpected treasure trove in aching disbelief. For Quintus Gavius Myrto had arranged his death as tidily as he had his life; his will had been registered and lodged with the Vestal Virgins, a simple document, since he had no cash to bequeath. All that he had to leave his books and his precious model of sun and moon and planets revolving around the earth he left to Sulla. Sulla had wept then, in drear and empty agony; his best and dearest and only real friend was gone, but every day of his life he would see Myrto's little library, and remember. "One day, Quintus Gavius," he said through the pain of his spasming throat, "I will find the lost works of Aristotle." Of course he hadn't managed to keep the books and the model long. One day he came home to find the corner where his straw pallet was lodged bare of everything save that pallet. His father had taken the lovingly accumulated treasures of Quintus Gavius Myrto and sold them all to buy wine. There followed the only occasion during Sulla's life with his father when he tried to commit parricide; luckily his sister had been present and put herself between them until sanity returned. It was very shortly afterward that she married her Nonius and went with him to Picenum. As for young Sulla, he never forgot, and he never forgave. At the end of his life, when he owned thousands of books and half a hundred models of the universe, he still would dwell upon the lost library of Quintus Gavius Myrto, and his grief.
The mental trick had worked; Sulla came back to the present moment and the garishly painted, clumsily executed group of Apollo and Daphne. When his eyes drifted past it and encountered the even more ghastly statue of Perseus holding up the Gorgon's head, he almost leaped to his feet, strong enough now to deal with Stichus. He stalked down the garden toward the study, which was the room normally reserved for the sole use of the head of the household; by default, it had been given over to Sulla, who functioned more or less as the man-about-the-house. The pimply little fart was stuffing his face with candied figs when Sulla walked into the tablinum, poking his dirty sticky fingers through the rolls of books slowly accumulating in the pigeonholed walls. "Ohhhhhhh!" Stichus whinnied at sight of Sulla, snatching his hands away. "It's lucky I know you're too stupid to read," said Sulla, snapping his fingers at the servant in the doorway. "Here," he said to the servant, a costly pretty Greek not worth a tenth what Clitumna had paid, "get a bowl of water and a clean cloth, and wipe up the mess Master Stichus has made." His eerie eyes stared at Stichus with the fixed malice of a goat in them, and he said to that unfortunate, who was trying to wipe the syrup off his hands by rubbing them on his expensive tunic, "I wish you'd get it out of your head that I keep a store of naughty picture books! I don't. Why should I? I don't need them. Naughty picture books are for people who don't have the guts to do anything. People like you, Stichus." "One day," said Stichus, "this house and everything in it is going to be mine. You won't be so uppity then!" "I hope you're offering plenty of sacrifices to postpone that day, Lucius Gavius, because it's likely to be your last. If it weren't for Clitumna, I'd cut you up into little pieces and feed you to the dogs." Stichus stared at the toga on Sulla's powerful frame, raising his brows; he wasn't really afraid of Sulla, he'd known him too long, but he did sense that danger lurked inside Sulla's fiery head, therefore normally he trod warily. A mode of conduct reinforced by his knowledge that his silly old Auntie Clittie could not be swerved from her slavish devotion to the fellow. However, upon his arrival an hour earlier he had found his aunt and her boon companion Nicopolis in a fine state because their darling Lucius Cornelius had gone out in a rage wearing his toga. When Stichus dragged all of the story out of Clitumna, from Metrobius to the ensuing brawl, he was disgusted. Sickened. So now he flopped himself down in Sulla's chair and said, "My, my, we are looking every inch the Roman today! Been to the inauguration of the consuls, have we? What a laugh! Your ancestry isn't half as good as mine." Sulla picked him up out of the chair by clamping the fingers of his right hand on one side of Stichus's jaw and his right thumb on the other side, a hold so exquisitely painful that its victim couldn't even scream; by the time he recovered enough breath to do so, he had seen Sulla's face, and didn't, just stood as mute and graven as his aunt and her boon companion had at dawn that morning. "My ancestry," said Sulla pleasantly, "is no business of yours. Now get out of my room." "It won't be your room forever!" gasped Stichus, scuttling to the door and almost colliding with the returning slave, now bearing a bowl of water and a cloth. "Don't count on it" was Sulla's parting shot. The expensive slave sidled into the room trying to look demure. Sulla eyed him up and down sourly. "Clean it up, you mincing flower," he said, and went to find the women. Stichus had beaten Sulla to Clitumna, who was closeted with her precious nephew and was not to be disturbed, said the steward apologetically. So Sulla walked down the colonnade surrounding the peristyle-garden to the suite of rooms where his mistress Nicopolis lived. There were savory smells coming from the cookhouse at the far end of the garden, a site it shared with the bathroom and the latrine; like most houses on the Palatine, Clitumna's was connected to the water supply and the sewers, thus relieving the staff of the burden of fetching water from a public fountain and toting the contents of the chamber pots to the nearest public latrine or drain opening in the gutter. "You know, Lucius Cornelius," said Nicopolis, abandoning her fancy work, "if you would only come down out of your aristocratic high-flies occasionally, you'd do a lot better." He sat on a comfortable couch with a sigh, rugging himself up a little more warmly in his toga because the room was cold, and let the servant girl nicknamed Bithy remove his winter boots. She was a nice cheerful lass with an unpronounceable name, from the backwoods of Bithynia; Clitumna had picked her up cheap from her nephew and inadvertently acquired a treasure. When the girl finished unlacing the boots she bustled out of the room purposefully; in a moment she returned bearing a pair of thick warm socks which she smoothed carefully over Sulla's perfect, snow-white feet. "Thank you, Bithy," he said, smiling at her and reaching out a careless hand to ruffle her hair. She absolutely glowed. Funny little thing, he thought with a tenderness that surprised him, until he realized that she reminded him of the girl next door. Julilla ... "How do you mean?" he asked Nicopolis, who seemed as usual impervious to the cold. "Why should that greedy little crawler Stichus inherit everything when Clitumna goes to join her dubious ancestors? If you would only change your tactics a fraction, Lucius Cornelius my very dear friend, she'd leave the lot to you. And she's got a lot, believe me!" "What's he doing, bleating that I hurt him?" asked Sulla, taking a bowl of nuts from Bithy with another special smile. "Of course he is! And lavishly embroidering it, I'm sure. I don't blame you in the least, he's detestable, but he is her only blood kin and she loves him, so she's blind to his faults. But she loves you more, haughty wretch that you are! So when you see her next, don't go all icy and proud and refuse to justify yourself spin her a story about Sticky Stichy even better than the one he' s spinning about you Half-intrigued, half-skeptical, he stared at her. "Go on, she'd never be stupid enough to fall for it," he said. "Oh, darling Lucius! When you want, you can make any woman fall for any line you care to toss them. Try it! Just this once? For my sake?" wheedled Nicopolis. "No. I'd end up the fool, Nicky." "You wouldn't, you know," Nicopolis persevered. "There isn't enough money in the world to make me grovel to the likes of Clitumna!" "She doesn't have all the money in the world, but she does have more than enough to see you into the Senate," whispered the temptress beguilingly. "No! You're wrong, you really are. There's this house, admittedly, but she spends every penny she gets and what she doesn't spend, Sticky Stichy does." "Not so. Why do you think her bankers hang on her every word as if she were Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi? She's got a very tidy fortune invested with them, and she doesn't spend half of her income. Besides which, give Sticky Stichy his due, he's not short of a sestertius either. As long as his late father's accountant and manager are capable of working, that business of Stichy's will continue to do very nicely." Sulla sat up with a jerk, loosening the folds of toga. "Nicky, you wouldn't spin me a tale, would you?" "I would, but not about this," she said, threading her needle with purple wool intertwined with gold bullion. "She'll live to be a hundred," he said then, subsiding onto the couch and handing back the bowl of nuts to Bithy, no longer hungry. "I agree, she might live to be a hundred," said Nicopolis, plunging her needle into the tapestry and drawing her glittering thread through very, very carefully. Her big dark eyes surveyed Sulla tranquilly. "But then again, she may not. Hers isn't a long-lived family, you know." There were noises outside; Lucius Gavius Stichus was evidently taking his leave of his Aunt Clitumna. Sulla stood up, let the servant girl slip backless Greek slippers onto his feet. The massive length and breadth of the toga slumped to the floor, but he seemed not to notice. "All right, Nicky, just this once I'll try it," he said, and grinned. "Wish me luck!" But before she could, he was gone.
The interview with Clitumna didn't go well; Stichus had done his work with cunning, and Sulla couldn't make himself humble his pride to plead, as Nicopolis had wanted. "It's all your fault, Lucius Cornelius," said Clitumna fretfully, twisting the expensive fringe of her shawl between beringed fingers. "You won't make the slightest effort to be nice to my poor boy, where he always tries to meet you more than halfway!" "He's a grubby little "would-be-if-he-could-be," said Sulla between his teeth. At which moment Nicopolis, listening outside the door, drifted gracefully through it and curled herself up on the couch beside Clitumna; she stared up at Sulla in resignation. "What's the matter?" she asked, all innocence. "It's both my Luciuses," said Clitumna. "They won't get on together, and I want them to so much!" Nicopolis disentangled fringe from fingers, then unhooked a few threads which had caught on the roughnesses of gem settings, and lifted Clitumna's hand to rest its back against her cheek. "Oh, my poor girl!" she crooned. "Your Luciuses are a couple of roosters, that's the trouble." "Well, they're going to have to learn to get on," said Clitumna, "because my darling Lucius Gavius is giving up his apartment and moving in with us next week." "Then I'm moving out," said Sulla. Both women began to squeal, Clitumna shrilly, Nicopolis like a small trapped kitten. "Oh, be your age!" Sulla whispered, thrusting his face down until it was only inches from Clitumna's. "He knows the situation here more or less, but how do you think he's going to stomach living in the same house with a man who sleeps between two women, and one of them his aunt?" Clitumna began to weep. "But he wants to come! How can I say no to my nephew?" "Don't bother! I'll remove the cause of all his complaints by moving out," said Sulla. As he began to withdraw Nicopolis stretched out her hand and clutched his arm. "Sulla, darling Sulla, don't!" she cried. "Look, you can sleep with me, and then whenever Stichus is out, Clitumna can come down and join us." "Oh, very crafty!" said Clitumna, stiffening. "You want him all to yourself, you greedy sow!" Nicopolis went white. "Well, what else do you suggest? It's your stupidity's got us into this mess!" "Shut up, both of you!" snarled Sulla in the whisper all who knew him well had learned to dread more than any other man's shout. "You've been going to mimes so long you're beginning to live them. Grow up, don't be so vulgarly crass! I detest the whole wretched situation, I'm tired of being half a man!" "Well, you're not half a man! You're two halves half mine, and half Nicky's!" said Clitumna nastily. There was no telling which hurt worse, the rage or the grief; perfectly poised on the very edge of madness, Sulla glared at his tormentors, unable to think, unable to see. "I can't go on!" he said, wonder in his voice. "Nonsense! Of course you can," said Nicopolis with the smugness of one who knew beyond any shadow of doubt that she had her man right where she wanted him under her foot. "Now run away and do something constructive. You'll feel better tomorrow. You always do."
Out of the house, off to anywhere anywhere constructive. Sulla's feet blundered up the alley rather than down, took him unaware across from the Germalus to the Palatium, that part of the Palatine which looked down toward the end of the Circus Maximus and the Capena Gate. The houses were thinner here and there were many park-like spaces; the Palatium wasn't terribly fashionable, it lay too far from the Forum Romanum. Uncaring that it was very cold and he clad only in his house tunic, he sat upon a stone and looked at the view; not at the vacant bleachers of the Circus Maximus nor the lovely temples of the Aventine, but at the vista of himself stretched endlessly into a terrible future, a warped roadway of skin and bone that had absolutely no purpose. The pain was like a colic without the release of purgation; he shook with it until he could hear the grinding of his teeth, and did not know he groaned aloud. "Are you ill?" asked the voice, small and timid. At first when he looked up he saw nothing, his agony took the power from his eyes, but then they cleared, and so she swam slowly into focus from pointed chin to golden hairline, a heart-shaped face that was all eyes, huge and honey-colored, very afraid for him. She knelt in front of him, wrapped in her homespun cocoon, just as he had seen her at the site of Flaccus's house. "Julia," he said with a shudder. "No, Julia's my older sister. They call me Julilla," she said, smiling at him. "Are you ill, Lucius Cornelius?" "Not with anything a physician can heal." Sanity and memory were returning; he understood the galling truth of Nicopolis's last remark, he would feel better tomorrow. And hated that more than anything. "I would like so much so very, very much! to go mad," he said, "but it seems I can't." Julilla remained where she was. "If you can't, then the Furies don't want you yet." "Are you here on your own?" he asked, disapproving. "What are your parents about, to let you wander abroad at this hour?" "My girl is with me," she said tranquilly, sinking back on her heels. A sudden light of mischief darted through her eyes, turned up the delicious corners of her mouth. "She's a good girl. The most loyal and discreet person." "You mean she lets you go wherever you like and doesn't tell on you. But one day," said the man who was perpetually caught, "you'll be caught." "Until I am, what's the use of worrying?" Lapsing into silence, she studied his face with unself-conscious curiosity, clearly enjoying what she saw. "Go home, Julilla," he said, sighing. "If you must get caught, don't let it be with me." "Because you're a bad lot?" she asked. That brought a faint smile. "If you like." "I don't think you are!" Oh, what god had sent her? Thank you, unknown god! His muscles were untwining themselves; he felt suddenly light, as if indeed some god had brushed by him, benign and good. A strange feeling for one who knew no good. "I am a bad lot, Julilla," he said. "Nonsense!" Her voice was firm and positive. No novice, he recognized the symptoms of a girlish crush, and knew an impulse to dispel it by some coarse or frightening action. But he couldn't. Not to her, she didn't deserve it. For her, he would reach into his grab bag of tricks and produce the best Lucius Cornelius Sulla of them all, free from artifice, innocent of smut and smirch and smarm. "Well, I thank you for your faith, young Julilla," he said a little lamely, unsure what she wanted to hear, anxious that it should reflect the best in him. "I have some time," she said gravely. "Might we talk?" He moved over on his rock. "All right. But sit here, the ground's too damp." "They say," she said, "that you're a disgrace to your name. But I don't see how that's possible, when you haven't had a chance to prove different." "I daresay your father's the author of that remark." "Which remark?" "That I'm a disgrace to my name." She was shocked. "Oh, no! Not tata! He's the wisest man in the world." "Where mine was the most foolish. We're at the opposite ends of Rome's spectrum, young Julilla." She was plucking at the long grass around the base of the rock, pulling it out in long rhizomes, then wove with her nimble fingers until she had made a wreath of it. "Here," she said, and held it out to him. His breath caught; the future spasmed, opened up to show him something, closed again with the glimpse too painfully short. "A crown of grass!" he said, wondering. "No! Not for me!" "Of course it's for you," she insisted, and when he still made no move to take it, she leaned forward and put it on his head. "It should be flowers, but not at this time of year." She didn't understand! Well, he wouldn't tell her. "You give a wreath of flowers only to a loved one," he said instead. "You are my loved one," she said softly. "Only for a little while, girl. It will pass." "Never!" He got up, laughed down at her. "Go on! You can't be more than fifteen," he said. "Sixteen!" she said quickly. “Fifteen, sixteen, what's the difference? You're a baby." Flushed with indignation, her face grew set, sharp. "I am not a baby!" she cried. "Of course you are." He laughed again. "Look at you, all swaddled up, a little roly-poly puppy." There! That was better! That ought to put her in her place. It did, but more than that She was blighted, withered, killed. The light died in her. "I'm not pretty?" she said. "I always thought I was." "Growing up is a cruel business," said Sulla harshly. "I suppose almost all families tell their girl-children they're pretty. But the world judges by different standards. You'll be passable when you're older, you won't lack a husband." "I only want you," she whispered. "That's now. Anyway, disabuse yourself, my fat puppy. Run away before I pull your tail. Go on, shoo!" She ran, her servant girl left far behind, calling after her vainly. Sulla stood watching until they both disappeared over the brow of the slope behind. The grass crown was still on his head, its tawny color a subtle contrast to his fiery curls; he reached up and plucked it off, but didn't throw it away, stood holding it between his hands and staring at it. Then he tucked it in his tunic, and turned to go. Poor little thing. He had hurt her after all. Still, she had to be discouraged; the last complication he needed in his life was Clitumna's next-door neighbor's daughter mooning over the wall, and she a senator's daughter. With every step he took as he walked away the grass crown tickled his skin, reminding him. Corona Graminea. Grass crown. Given to him here on the Palatine, where hundreds of years before the original city of Romulus had stood, a bevy of oval thatched huts like the one still lovingly cared for near the Steps of Cacus. A grass crown given to him by a personification of Venus truly one of Venus's girls, a Julia. An omen. "If it comes to pass, I will build you a temple, Venus Victorious," he said aloud. For he saw his way clear at last. Dangerous. Desperate. But for one with nothing to lose and everything to gain, possible nonetheless.