The Assembly of the People duly elected Sulla a quaestor, and even though his year of office was not due to commence until the fifth day of December (though, as with all the personal quaestors, he would not be required until the New Year, when his superior would enter office), Sulla presented himself the day after the elections at the house of Marius. November was under way, so dawn was growing later, a fact for which Sulla was profoundly thankful; his nightly excesses with Julilla made early rising more difficult than of yore. But he knew he had to present himself before the sun rose, for Marius's requesting him as personal quaestor had subtly changed Sulla's status. Though it was not a traditional clientship lasting for life, Sulla was now technically Marius's client for the duration of his quaestorship, which ran as long as Marius kept his imperium, rather than for the normal year. And a client did not lie abed with his new wife into the daylight hours; a client presented himself as the first light infused the sky at the house of his patron, and there offered his services to his patron in whatever manner his patron wished. He might find himself courteously dismissed; he might be asked to go with his patron into the Forum Romanum or one of the basilicae to conduct a day's public or private business; he might be deputed to perform some task for his patron. Though he was not untimely enough to deserve rebuke, the vast atrium of Marius's house was packed with clients more timely than Sulla; some, Sulla decided, must actually have slept in the street outside Marius's door, for normally they were seen in the order in which they had arrived. Sighing, Sulla made for an inconspicuous corner and prepared for a long wait. Some great men employed secretaries and nomenclatores to sort the morning's catch of clients, dismissing the sprats needful only of being noted as present, and sending none but big or interesting fish in to see the great man himself. But Gaius Marius, Sulla noted with approval, acted as his own culler of the catch; there was not an aide to be seen. This particular great man, consul-elect and therefore of enormous importance to many in Rome, did his own dirty work with calm expedition, separating the needful from the dutiful more efficiently than any secretary Sulla knew of. Within twenty minutes the four hundred men clustered in the atrium and spilling onto the peristyle colonnade had been sorted out and tidied up; over half were happily departing, each freedman client or freeman client of lowly status clutching a donative pressed into his hand by a Marius all smiles and deprecating gestures. Well, thought Sulla, he may be a New Man and he may be more an Italian than a Roman, but he knows how to behave, all right. No Fabius or Aemilius could have performed the role of patron better. It wasn't necessary to bestow largesse upon clients unless they specifically asked for it, and even then it lay within the discretion of the patron to refuse; but Sulla knew from the attitude of those waiting their turns as Marius moved from man to man that Marius made a habit of bestowing largesse, while giving out a subtle message in his manner that woe betide any man being plain greedy. "Lucius Cornelius, you've no need to wait out here!" said Marius when he arrived in Sulla's corner. "Go into my study, sit down, and make yourself comfortable. I'll be with you shortly, and we can talk." "Not at all, Gaius Marius," Sulla said, and smiled with his mouth shut. "I am here to offer you my services as your new quaestor, and I'm happy to wait my turn." "Then you can wait your turn seated in my study. If you are to function properly as my quaestor, you'd better see how I conduct my affairs," said Marius, put a hand on Sulla's shoulder, and escorted him into the tablinum. Within three hours the throng of clients was dealt with, patiently yet swiftly; their petitions ranged from some sort of assistance to requests to be considered among the first when Numidia was reopened to Roman and Italian businessmen. Nothing was ever asked of them in return, but the implication was nonetheless patent have yourself ready to do whatever your patron wishes at any time, be it tomorrow or twenty years from tomorrow. “Gaius Marius,'' said Sulla when the last client was gone, "since Quintus Caecilius Metellus has already had his command in Africa prorogued for next year, how can you hope to help your clients into businesses when Numidia is reopened?" Marius looked pensive. "Why, that's true, Quintus Caecilius does have Africa next year, doesn't he?" As this was clearly a rhetorical question, Sulla didn't attempt to answer it, just sat fascinated with the way Marius's mind worked. No wonder he'd got as far as consul! "Well, Lucius Cornelius, I've been thinking about the problem of Quintus Caecilius in Africa, and it's not insoluble." "But the Senate will never replace Quintus Caecilius with you," Sulla ventured. "I'm not deeply acquainted with the political nuances inside the Senate as yet, but I have certainly experienced your unpopularity among the leading senators, and it seems far too strong to permit you to swim against it." "Very true," said Marius, still smiling pleasantly. "I am an Italian hayseed with no Greek to quote Metellus, whom I had better inform you I always call Piggle-wiggle and unworthy of the consulship. Not to mention that I'm fifty years old, which is far too late into office, an age thought beyond great military commands. The dice are loaded against me in the Senate. But then, they always have been, you know. And yet here I am, consul at fifty! A bit of a mystery, isn't it, Lucius Cornelius?" Sulla grinned, which meant he looked a little feral; Marius did not seem perturbed. "Yes, Gaius Marius, it is." Marius leaned forward in his chair and folded his beautiful hands together on the fabulous green stone of his desk top. "Lucius Cornelius, many years ago I discovered how very many different ways there are to skin a cat. While others proceeded up the cursus honorum without a hiccough, I marked time. But it was not time wasted. I spent it cataloguing all the ways of skinning that cat. Among other equally rewarding things. You see, when one is kept waiting beyond one's proper turn, one watches, assesses, puts pieces together. I was never a great lawyer, never an expert on our unwritten Constitution. While Metellus Piggle-wiggle was trailing around the courts behind Cassius Ravilla and learning how to secure condemnations of Vestal Virgins well, I mean it in an apocryphal sense only, the time frame is quite wrong I was soldiering. And I continued to soldier. It's what I do best. Yet, I would not be wrong if I made the boast that I have come to know more about the law and the Constitution than half a hundred Metellus Piggle-wiggles. I look at things from the outside, my brain hasn't been channeled into a rut by training. So I say to you now, I am going to tumble Quintus Caecilius Metellus Piggle-wiggle from the high horse of his African command, and I myself am going to replace him there." "I believe you," said Sulla, drawing a breath. "But how?" "They're all legal simpletons," said Marius scornfully, "that's how. Because by custom the Senate has always doled out the governorships, it never occurs to anyone that senatorial decrees do not, strictly speaking, have any weight at law. Oh, they all know that fact if you get them to rattle it off, but it's never sunk in, even after the lessons the Brothers Gracchi tried to teach them. Senatorial decrees only have the force of custom, of tradition. Not of law! It's the Plebeian Assembly makes the law these days, Lucius Cornelius. And I wield a great deal more power in the Plebeian Assembly than any Caecilius Metellus." Sulla sat absolutely still, awed and a little afraid, two odd sensations in him. Awesome though Marius's brainpower might be, Marius's brainpower was not what awed Sulla; no, what awed Sulla was the novel experience of being drawn into a vulnerable man's complete confidence. How did Marius know he, Sulla, was to be trusted? Trust had never been a part of his reputation, and Marius would have made it his business to explore Sulla's reputation thoroughly. Yet here was Marius baring his future intentions and actions for Sulla's inspection! And putting all his trust in his unknown quaestor, just as if that trust had already been earned. "Gaius Marius," he said, unable not to say it, "what's to stop me from turning into the house of any Caecilius Metellus after I leave here this morning, and telling that Caecilius Metellus everything you're telling me?" "Why, nothing, Lucius Cornelius," said Marius, undismayed by the question. "Then why are you making me privy to all this?" "Oh, that's easy," said Marius. "Because, Lucius Cornelius, you strike me as a superbly able and intelligent man. And any superbly able and intelligent man is superbly able to use his intelligence to work out for himself that it's not at all intelligent to throw in his lot with a Caecilius Metellus when a Gaius Marius is offering him the stimulation and the excitement of a few years of interesting and rewarding work." He drew a huge breath. "There! I got that out quite well." Sulla began to laugh. "Your secrets are safe with me, Gaius Marius." "I know that." "Still and all, I would like you to know that I appreciate your confidence in me." "We're brothers-in-law, Lucius Cornelius. We're linked, and by more than the Julius Caesars. You see, we share another commonality. Luck." "Ah! Luck." "Luck is a sign, Lucius Cornelius. To have luck is to be beloved of the gods. To have luck is to be chosen." And Marius looked at his new quaestor in perfect contentment. "I am chosen. And I chose you because I think you too are chosen. We are important to Rome, Lucius Cornelius. We will both make our mark on Rome." "I believe that too," said Sulla. "Yes, well… In another month, there will be a new College of Tribunes of the Plebs in office. Once the college is in, I'll make my move regarding Africa." "You're going to use the Plebeian Assembly to pass a law to topple the senatorial decree giving Metellus Piggle-wiggle another year in Africa," said Sulla certainly. "I am indeed," said Marius. "But is it really legal? Will such a law be allowed to stand?" asked Sulla; and to himself he began to appreciate how a very intelligent New Man, emancipated from custom, could turn the whole system upside down. "There's nothing on the tablets to say it isn't legal, and therefore nothing to say that it can't be done. I have a burning desire to emasculate the Senate, and the most effective way to do that is to undermine its traditional authority. How? By legislating its traditional authority out of existence. By creating a precedent." "Why is it so important that you get the African command?" Sulla asked. "The Germans have reached as far as Tolosa, and the Germans are far more important than Jugurtha. Someone is going to have to go to Gaul to deal with them next year, and I'd far rather it was you than Lucius Cassius." "I won't get the chance," said Marius positively. "Our esteemed colleague Lucius Cassius is the senior consul, and he wants the Gallic command against the Germans. Anyway, the command against Jugurtha is vital for my political survival. I've undertaken to represent the interests of the knights, both in Africa Province and in Numidia. Which means I must be in Africa when the war ends to make sure my clients get all the concessions I've promised them. Not only will there be a vast amount of superb grain-growing land to partition up in Numidia, but there have been recent discoveries of a unique first-quality marble, and large deposits of copper as well. Added to which, Numidia yields two rare gemstones and a lot of gold. And since Jugurtha became king, Rome has had no share in any of it." "All right, Africa it is," said Sulla. "What can I do to help?" "Learn, Lucius Cornelius, learn! I am going to need a corps of officers who are something more than merely loyal. I want men who can act on their own initiative without ruining my grand design men who will add to my own ability and efficiency, rather than drain me. I don't care about sharing the credit, there's plenty of credit and glory to go around when things are well run and the legions are given a chance to show what they can do." "But I'm as green as grass, Gaius Marius." "I know that," said Marius. "But, as I've already told you, I think you have great potential. Stick with me, give me loyalty and hard work, and I'll give you every opportunity to develop that potential. Like me, you're late starting. But it's never too late. I'm consul at last, eight years beyond the proper age. You're in the Senate at last, three years beyond the proper age. Like me, you're going to have to concentrate upon the army as a way to the top. I'll help you in every way I can. In return, I expect you to help me." "That sounds fair, Gaius Marius." Sulla cleared his throat. "I'm very grateful." "You shouldn't be. If I didn't think I'd get a good return from you, Lucius Cornelius, you wouldn't be sitting here now." And Marius held out his hand. "Come, let's agree that there'll be no gratitude between us! Just loyalty and the comradeship of the legions."
* * *
Gaius Marius had bought himself a tribune of the plebs, and picked himself a good man at that. For Titus Manlius Mancinus didn't sell his tribunician favors entirely for money. Mancinus was out to make a splash as a tribune of the plebs, and needed a cause better than the only one which mattered to him the casting of every impediment he could think of in the path of the patrician Manlius family, of which he was not a member. His hatred of the Manliuses, he found, easily spread to encompass all the great aristocratic and noble families, including the Caecilius Metelluses. So he was able to accept Marius's money with a clear conscience, and espouse Marius's plans with premonitory glee. The ten new tribunes of the plebs went into office on the third day before the Ides of December, and Titus Manlius Mancinus wasted no time. On that very day he introduced a bill into the Assembly of the Plebs that purported to remove the African command from Quintus Caecilius Metellus, and give it instead to Gaius Marius. "The People are sovereign!" Mancinus shouted to the crowd. "The Senate is the servant of the People, not the People's master! If the Senate enacts its duties with proper respect for the People of Rome, then by all means it should be allowed to go on doing so. But when the Senate enacts its duties to protect its own leading members at the expense of the People, it must be stopped. Quintus Caecilius Metellus has proven derelict in his command, he has accomplished precisely nothing! Why then has the Senate extended his command for a second time, into this coming year? Because, People of Rome, the Senate is as usual protecting its own leading lights at the expense of the People. In Gaius Marius, duly elected consul for this coming year, the People of Rome have a leader worthy of that name. But according to the men who run the Senate, Gaius Marius's name isn't good enough! Gaius Marius, People of Rome, is a mere New Man an upstart a nobody, not a noble!" The crowd was rapt; Mancinus was a good speaker, and felt passionately about senatorial exclusivity. It was some time since the Plebs had tweaked the Senate's nose, and many of the unelected but influential leaders of the Plebs were worried that their arm of Rome's government was losing ground. So on that day at that moment in time, everything ran in Gaius Marius's favor public sentiment, knightly disgruntlement, and ten tribunes of the plebs in a mood to tweak the Senate's nose, not one of them on the Senate's side. The Senate fought back, marshaling its best orators of plebeian status to speak in the Assembly, including Lucius Caecilius Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus ardent in his young brother Piggle-wiggle's defense and the senior consul-elect, Lucius Cassius Longinus. But Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, who might have tipped the scales in the Senate's favor, was a patrician, and therefore could not speak in the Plebeian Assembly. Forced to stand on the steps of the Senate House looking down into the jam-packed tiered circular well of the Comitia, in which the Plebeian Assembly met, Scaurus could only listen impotently. "They'll beat us," he said to the censor Fabius Maximus Eburnus, another patrician. "Piss on Gaius Marius!" Pissed on or not, Gaius Marius won. The remorseless letter campaign had succeeded brilliantly in turning the knights and the middle classes away from Metellus, smearing his name, quite destroying his political clout. Of course in time he would recover; his family and connections were too powerful. But at the moment the Plebeian Assembly, ably led by Mancinus, took his African command off him, his name in Rome was muddier than the pigsty of Numantia. And take his African command off him the People did, passing a precedent-setting law which replaced him with Gaius Marius by name. And once the law strictly, a plebiscite was engraved on the tablets, it lay in an archive under a temple as an example and a recourse for others in the future to try the same thing others who might perhaps not have either the ability of Gaius Marius, or his excellent reasons. "However," said Marius to Sulla as soon as the law was passed, "Metellus will never leave me his soldiers." Oh, how many things were there to learn, things he, a patrician Cornelius, ought to know, yet didn't? Sometimes Sulla despaired of learning enough, but then would contemplate his luck in having Gaius Marius as his commander, and rest easier. For Marius was never too busy to explain things to him, and thought no less of him for his ignorance. So now Sulla increased his knowledge by asking, "But don't the soldiers belong to the war against King Jugurtha? Oughtn't they stay in Africa until the war is won?" "They could stay in Africa but only if Metellus wanted them to stay. He would have to announce to the army that it had signed on for the duration of the campaign, and therefore his removal from the command did not affect its fate. But there's nothing to stop him taking the position that he recruited them, and that their term finishes simultaneously with his. Knowing Metellus, that's the position he'll take. So he'll discharge them, and ship them straight back to Italy." "Which means you'll have to recruit a new army," said Sulla. "I see." Then he asked, "Couldn't you wait until he brings his army home, then re-enlist it in your name?" "I could," said Marius. "Unfortunately I won't get the chance. Lucius Cassius is going to Gaul to deal with the Germans at Tolosa. A job which has to be done we don't want half a million Germans sitting within a hundred miles of the road to Spain, and right on the borders of our own province. So I would imagine that Cassius has already written to Metellus and asked him to re-enlist his army for the Gallic campaign before it even departs from Africa.'' "So that's how it works," said Sulla. "That's how it works. Lucius Cassius is the senior consul, he takes precedence over me. Therefore he has first choice of whatever troops are available. Metellus will bring six highly trained and seasoned legions back to Italy with him. And they will be the troops Cassius takes to Gaul-across-the-Alps, no doubt of it. And that means I am going to have to start from the beginning recruit raw material, train it, equip it, fill it with enthusiasm for the war against Jugurtha." Marius pulled a face. "It will mean that in my year as consul I won't be given enough time to mount the kind of offensive against Jugurtha I could mount if Metellus left his troops behind for me. In turn, that means I'll have to make sure my own command in Africa is extended into the following year, or I'll fall flat on my arse and wind up looking worse than Piggle-wiggle." "And now there's a law on the tablets that creates a precedent for someone to take your command off you exactly as you took the command off Metellus." Sulla sighed. "It isn't easy, is it? I never dreamed of the difficulties a man could face just ensuring his own survival, let alone advancing the majesty of Rome." That amused Marius; he laughed delightedly, and clapped Sulla on the back. "No, Lucius Cornelius, it isn't ever easy. But that's what makes it so worth doing! What man of true excellence and worth honestly wants a smooth path? The rougher the path, the more obstacles in the way, the more satisfaction there is." This constituted an answer on a personal plane, perhaps, but it didn't solve Sulla's main problem. "Yesterday you told me Italy is completely exhausted," he said. "So many men have died that the levies can't be filled among the citizens of Rome, and Italian resistance to the levies is hardening day by day. Where then can you possibly find enough raw material to form into four good legions? Because as you've said yourself you can't defeat Jugurtha with fewer than four legions." "Wait until I'm consul, Lucius Cornelius, and you'll see," was all Sulla could get out of him.
It was the feast of the Saturnalia undid Sulla's resolutions. In the days when Clitumna and Nicopolis had shared the house with him, this time of holiday and merrymaking had been a wonderful end to the old year. The slaves had lain around snapping their fingers while the two women had run giggling to obey their wishes, everyone had drunk too much, and Sulla had yielded up his place in the communal bed to whichever slaves fancied Clitumna and Nicopolis on condition that he enjoyed the same privileges elsewhere in the house. And after the Saturnalia was over, things went back to normal as if nothing untoward had ever happened. But this first year of his marriage to Julilla saw Sulla experience a very different Saturnalia: he was required to spend the waking hours of it next door, in the midst of the family of Gaius Julius Caesar. There too for the three days the festival lasted, everything was upside down the slaves were waited on by their owners, little gifts changed hands, and a special effort was exerted to provide food and wine as delectable as plentiful. But nothing really changed. The poor servants lay as stiff as statues on the dining couches and smiled shyly at Marcia and Caesar as they hurried back and forth between triclinium and kitchen, no one would have dreamed of getting drunk, and certainly no one would have dreamed of doing or saying anything which might have led to embarrassment when the household reverted to normal. Gaius Marius and Julia attended also, and seemed to find the proceedings perfectly satisfactory; but then, thought Sulla resentfully, Gaius Marius was too anxious to be one of them to contemplate putting a foot wrong. "What a treat it's been," said Sulla as he and Julilla said their farewells at the door on the last evening, and so careful had he become that no one, even Julilla, realized he was being heavily sarcastic. "It wasn't too bad at all," said Julilla as she followed Sulla into their own house, where in lieu of the master and mistress's presence the slaves had simply been given a three-day rest. "I'm glad you think so," said Sulla, bolting the gate. Julilla sighed and stretched. "And tomorrow is the dinner for Crassus Orator. I must say I'm looking forward to that." Sulla stopped halfway across the atrium and turned to stare at her. "You're not coming," he said. "What do you mean?" "Just what I said." . "But but I thought wives were invited too!" she cried, face puckering. "Some wives," said Sulla. "Not you." "I want to go! Everyone's talking about it, all my friends are so envious I told them I was going!" "Too bad. You're not going, Julilla." One of the house slaves met them at the study door, a little drunk. "Oh, good, you're home!" he said, staggering. "Fetch me some wine, and be quick about it!" "The Saturnalia is over," said Sulla very softly. "Get out, you fool." The slave went, suddenly sober. "Why are you in such a beastly mood?" Julilla demanded as they entered the master's sleeping cubicle. "I'm not in a beastly mood," he said, and went to stand behind her, slip his arms about her. She pulled away. "Leave me alone!" "Now what's the matter?" "I want to go to Crassus Orator's dinner!" "Well, you can't." "Why?" "Because, Julilla," he said patiently, "it isn't the kind of party your father would approve of, and the few wives who are going are not women your father approves of." "I'm not in my father's hand anymore, I can do anything I like," she said. "That's not true, and you know it. You passed from your father's hand to my hand. And I say you're not going." Without a word Julilla picked up her clothes from the floor, and flung a robe about her thin body. Then she turned and left the room. "Please yourself!" Sulla called after her. In the morning she was cold to him, a tactic he ignored, and when he left for Crassus Orator's dinner, she was nowhere to be found. "Spoiled little baggage," he said to himself. The tiff ought to have been amusing; that it wasn't had nothing to do with the tiff, but came from somewhere much deeper within Sulla than the space Julilla occupied. He wasn't the slightest bit excited at the prospect of dining at the opulent mansion of the auctioneer Quintus Granius, who was giving the dinner party. When he had first received the invitation, he had been quite absurdly pleased, interpreting it as an overture of friendship from an important young senatorial circle; then he heard the gossip about the party, and understood that he had been invited because he had a shady past, would add a touch of the exotic to liven the aristocratic male guest list. Now as he plodded along he was in better case to gauge what kind of trap had closed about him when he married Julilla and entered the ranks of his natural peers. For it was a trap. And there was no relief from its jaws while he was forced to live in Rome. All very well for Crassus Orator, so entrenched he could be party to a party deliberately designed to defy the sumptuary edict of his own father, so secure in his tenure of Senate and a new tribunate of the plebs that he could afford even the luxury of pretending to be vulgar and underbred, accept the blatant favor currying of a mushroom like Quintus Granius the auctioneer. When he entered Quintus Granius's vast dining room, he saw Colubra smiling at him from over the top of a jeweled golden beaker, saw her pat the couch beside her invitingly. I was right, I'm here as a freak, he said silently, gave Colubra a brilliant smile, and yielded up his person to the attentions of a crowd of obsequious slaves. No intimate function, this! The dining room was filled with couches sixty guests would recline to celebrate Crassus Orator's entry upon the tribunate of the plebs. But, thought Sulla as he climbed up beside Colubra, Quintus Granius doesn't have the slightest idea how to throw a real party. When he left six hours later which meant he left well ahead of any other guest he was drunk, and his mood had plummeted from acceptance of his lot to the kind of black depression he had thought he would never experience again once he entered his rightful sphere. He was frustrated, powerless and, he realized suddenly, intolerably lonely. From his heart to his head to his fingers and toes he ached for congenial and loving company, someone to laugh with, someone free from ulterior motives, someone entirely his. Someone with black eyes and black curls and the sweetest arse in the world. And he walked, gifted with wings on his feet, all the way out to the apartment of Scylax the actor without once allowing himself to remember how fraught with peril this course was, how imprudent, how foolish, how it didn't matter! For Scylax would be there; all he'd be able to do was sit and drink a cup of watered wine, and mouth inanities with Scylax, and let his eyes feast upon his boy. No one would be in a position to say a thing. An innocent visit, nothing more. But Fortune still smiled. Metrobius was there alone, left behind as punishment when Scylax departed to visit friends in Antium. Metrobius was there alone. So glad to see him! So filled with love, with hunger, with passion, with grief. And Sulla, the passion and hunger sated, put the boy on his knees and hugged him, and almost wept. "I spent too long in this world," he said. "Ye gods, how I miss it!" "How I miss you!" said the boy, snuggling down. A silence fell; Metrobius could feel Sulla's convulsive swallows against his cheek, and yearned to feel Sulla's tears. But them, he knew, he would not feel. "What's the matter, dear Lucius Cornelius?" he asked. "I'm bored," said Sulla's voice, very detached. "These people at the top are such hypocrites, so deadly dull! Good form and good manners on every public occasion, then furtively dirty pleasures whenever they think no one's watching I'm finding it hard tonight to disguise my contempt." "I thought you'd be happy," said Metrobius, not displeased. "So did I," said Sulla wryly, and fell silent again. "Why come tonight?" "Oh, I went to a party." "No good?" "Not by your or my lights, lovely lad. By theirs, it was a brilliant success. All I wanted to do was laugh. And then, on the way home, I realized I had no one to share the joke with. No one!" "Except me," said Metrobius, and sat up straight. "Well then, aren't you going to tell me?" "You know who the Licinius Crassuses are, don't you?" Metrobius studied his nails. "I'm a child star of the comedy theater," he said. "What do I know about the Famous Families?" "The family Licinius Crassus has been supplying Rome with consuls and the occasional Pontifex Maximus for oh, centuries! It's a fabulously rich family, and it produces men of two sorts the frugal sort, and the sybaritic sort. Now this Crassus Orator's father was one of the frugal sort, and put that ridiculous sumptuary law on the tablets you know the one," said Sulla. "No gold plate, no purple cloths, no oysters, no imported wine is that the one?" "It is. But Crassus Orator who it seems didn't get on with his father adores to be surrounded by every conceivable luxury. And Quintus Granius the auctioneer needs a political favor from Crassus Orator now that he's a tribune of the plebs, so Quintus Granius the auctioneer threw a party tonight in honor of Crassus Orator. The theme," said Sulla, a little expression creeping into his voice, "was 'Let's ignore the lex Licinia sumptuaria!'" "Was that why you were invited?" asked Metrobius. "I was invited because it appears in the highest circles the circles of Crassus Orator, that is, even if not of Quintus Granius the auctioneer I am regarded as a fascinating fellow life as low as birth was high. I think they thought I'd strip off all my clothes and sing a few dirty ditties while I humped the daylights out of Colubra." "Colubra?" "Colubra." Metrobius whistled. "You are moving in exalted circles! I hear she charges a silver talent for irrumatio." "She might, but she offered it to me for nothing," said Sulla, grinning. "I declined." Metrobius shivered. "Oh, Lucius Cornelius, don't go making enemies now that you're in your rightful world! Women like Colubra wield enormous power." An expression of distaste settled upon Sulla's face. "Tchah! I piss on them!" "They'd probably like that," said Metrobius thoughtfully. It did the trick; Sulla laughed, and settled down to tell his story more happily. "There were a few wives there the more adventurous kind, with husbands pecked almost to death two Claudias, and a lady in a mask who insisted on being called Aspasia, but who I know very well is Crassus Orator's cousin Licinia you remember, I used to sleep with her occasionally?" "I remember," said Metrobius a little grimly. "The place absolutely dripped gold and Tyrian purple," Sulla went on. "Even the dishrags were Tyrian purple oversewn with gold! You should have seen the dining steward waiting until his master wasn't looking, and then whipping out an ordinary dishrag to mop up someone's spilled Chian wine the gold-and-purple rags were useless, of course." "You hated it," said Metrobius. "I hated it," said Sulla, sighed, and resumed his story. "The couches were encrusted with pearls. They really were! And the guests fiddled and plucked until they managed to denude the couches of their pearls, popped them into a corner of the gold-and-purple napkins, knotted the corner up carefully and there wasn't one among the men at least who couldn't have bought what he stole without noticing the expense." "Except you," said Metrobius softly, and pushed the hair off Sulla's white brow. "You didn't take any pearls." "I'd sooner have died," said Sulla. He shrugged. "They were only little river blisters, anyway." Metrobius chuckled. "Don't spoil it! I like it when you're insufferably proud and noble." Smiling, Sulla kissed him. "That bad, am I?" "That bad. What was the food like?" "Catered. Well, not even Granius's kitchens could have turned out enough food for sixty ooops, fifty-nine! of the worst gluttons I've ever seen. Every hen egg was a tenth egg, most of them double-yolked. There were swan eggs, goose eggs, duck eggs, seabird eggs, and even some eggs with gilded shells. Stuffed udders of nursing sows fowls fattened on honey cakes soaked in vintage Falernian wine snails specially imported from Liguria oysters driven up from Baiae in a fast gig the air was so redolent with the most expensive peppers that I had a sneezing fit." He needed to talk very badly, Metrobius realized; what a strange world Sulla's must be now. Not at all as he had imagined it, though how exactly he had imagined it before it happened was something Metrobius did not know. For Sulla was not a talker, never had been a talker. Until tonight. Out of nowhere! The sight of that beloved face was a sight Metrobius had reconciled himself never to see again, save at a distance. Yet there on the doorstep he'd stood, looking ghastly. And needing love. Needing to talk. Sulla! How lonely he must be, indeed. "What else was there?" Metrobius prompted, anxious to keep him talking. Up went one red-gold brow, its darkening of stibium long gone. "The best was yet to come, as it turned out. They bore it in shoulder-high on a Tyrian purple cushion in a gem-studded golden dish, a huge licker-fish of the Tiber with the same look on its face as a flogged mastiff. Round and round the room they paraded it, with more ceremony than the twelve gods are accorded at a lectisternium. A fish!" Metrobius knitted his brows. "What sort of fish was it?" Sulla pulled his head back to stare into Metrobius's face. "You know! A licker-fish." "If I do, I don't remember." Sulla considered, relaxed. "I daresay you mightn't, at that. Licker-fish are a far cry from a comics' feast. Let me just say, young Metrobius, that every gastronomic fool in Rome's upper stratum passes into a swoon of ecstasy at the very thought of a licker-fish of the Tiber. Yet there they cruise between the Wooden Bridge and the Pons Aemilius, laving their scaly sides in the outflow from the sewers, and so full from eating Rome's shit that they can't even be bothered nosing a bait. They smell of shit and they taste of shit. Eat them, and, in my opinion, you're eating shit. But Quintus Granius and Crassus Orator raved and drooled as if a licker-fish of the Tiber was a compound of nectar and ambrosia instead of a shit-eating drone of a freshwater bass!" Metrobius couldn't help himself; he gagged. "Well said!" cried Sulla, and began to laugh. "Oh, if you could only have seen them, all those puffed-up fools! Calling themselves Rome's best and finest, while Rome's shit dribbled down their chins " He stopped, sucked in a hissing breath. "I couldn't take it another day. Another hour." He stopped again. "I'm drunk. It was that awful Saturnalia." "Awful Saturnalia?" "Boring awful it doesn't matter. A different upper stratum than Crassus Orator's party crowd, Metrobius, but just as dreadful. Boring. Boring, boring, boring!" He shrugged. "Never mind. Next year I'll be in Numidia, with something to sink my teeth into. I can't wait! Rome without you––without my old friends I can't bear it." A shiver rolled visibly down him. "I'm drunk, Metrobius. I shouldn't be here. But oh, if you knew how good it is to be here!" "I only know how good it is to have you here," said Metrobius loudly. "Your voice is breaking," said Sulla, surprised. "And not before time. I'm seventeen, Lucius Cornelius. Luckily I'm small for my age, and Scylax has trained me to keep my voice high. But sometimes these days I forget. It's harder to control. I'll be shaving soon." "Seventeen!" Metrobius slid off Sulla's lap and stood looking down at him gravely, then held out one hand. "Come! Stay with me a little while longer. You can go home before it's light.'' Reluctantly Sulla got up. "I'll stay," he said, "this time. But I won't be back." "I know," said Metrobius, and lifted his visitor's arm until it lay across his shoulders. "Next year you'll be in Numidia, and you'll be happy."
THE FOURTH YEAR (107 B.C.) IN THE CONSULSHIP OF LUCIUS CASSIUS LONGINUS AND GAIUS MARIUS (I)
No consulship ever mattered to its owner the Marius's first consulship mattered to him. He proceeded to his inauguration on New Year's Day secure in the knowledge that his night watch for omens had been unimpeachable, and that his white bull had gorged itself on drugged fodder. Solemn and aloof, Marius stood looking every inch the consul, splendidly tall, far more distinguished than any of those around him in the crisp fine early morning air; the senior consul, Lucius Cassius Longinus, was short and stocky, didn't look imposing in a toga, and was completely overshadowed by his junior colleague. And at long last Lucius Cornelius Sulla walked as a senator, the broad purple stripe on the right shoulder of his tunic, attending his consul, Marius, in the role of quaestor. Though he didn't have the fasces for the month of January, those crimson-tied bundles of rods being the property of the senior consul, Cassius, until the Kalends of February, Marius nevertheless summoned the Senate for a meeting the following day. "At the moment," he said to the assembled senators, almost all of whom elected to attend, for they didn't trust Marius, "Rome is being called upon to fight wars on at least three fronts, and that excludes Spain. We need troops to combat King Jugurtha, the Scordisci in Macedonia, and the Germans in Gaul. However, in the fifteen years since the death of Gaius Gracchus we have lost sixty thousand Roman soldiers, dead on various fields of battle. Thousands more have been rendered unfit for further military service. I repeat the length of the period, Conscript Fathers of the Senate fifteen years. Not even half a generation in length." The House was very silent; among those who sat there was Marcus Junius Silanus, who had lost more than a third of that total less than two years earlier, and was still fending off treason charges. No one had ever dared before to say the dreaded total number in the House, yet all present knew very well that Marius's figures erred on the side of conservatism. Numbed by the sound of the figures pronounced in Marius's upcountry Latin, the senators listened. "We cannot fill the levies," Marius went on, "for one cogent reason. We no longer have enough men. The shortage of Roman citizen and Latin Rights men is frightening, but the shortage of Italian men is worse. Even conscripting in every district south of the Arnus, we stand no hope of recruiting the troops we need to field this year. I would presume the African army, six legions strong, trained and equipped, will return to Italy with Quintus Caecilius Metellus, and be used by my esteemed colleague Lucius Cassius in Further Gaul of the Tolosates. The Macedonian legions are also properly equipped and of veteran status, and will, I am sure, continue to do well under Marcus Minucius and his young brother." Marius paused to draw breath; the House continued to listen. "But there remains the problem of a new African army. Quintus Caecilius Metellus has had six full-strength legions at his disposal. I anticipate being able to reduce that total to four legions if I have to. However, Rome doesn't have four legions in reserve! Rome doesn't even have one legion in reserve! To refresh your memories, I will give you the precise numbers a four-legion army contains." There was no need for a Gaius Marius to refer to notes; he simply stood there on the consuls' dais slightly in front of his ivory curule chair and gave the figures out of his memory. "At full strength: 5,120 infantrymen per legion, plus 1,280 noncombatant freemen and another 1,000 non-combatant slaves per legion. Then we have the cavalry: a force of 2,000 mounted troops, with a further 2,000 non-combatant freemen and slaves to support the horse. I am therefore faced with the task of finding 20,480 infantrymen, 5,120 noncombatant freemen, 4,000 noncombatant slaves, 2,000 cavalry troopers, and 2,000 noncombatant cavalry support men." His eyes traveled the House. "Now the noncombatant forces have never been difficult to recruit, and will not be difficult to recruit, I predict there is no property qualification upon the noncombatant, who can be as poor as a foothills sharecropper. Nor will the cavalry be difficult, as it is many generations since Rome fielded mounted troopers of Roman or Italian origin. We will as always find the men we want in places like Macedonia, Thrace, Liguria, and Gaul-across-the-Alps, and they bring their own noncombatants with them, as well as their horses." He paused for a longer space of time, noting certain men: Scaurus and the unsuccessful consular candidate Catulus Caesar, Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus, Gaius Memmius, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, Scipio Nasica, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus. Whichever way these men jumped, the senatorial sheep would follow. "Ours is a frugal state, Conscript Fathers. When we threw out the kings, we abrogated the concept of fielding an army largely paid for by the State. For that reason, we limited armed service to those with sufficient property to buy their own arms, armor, and other equipment, and that requirement was for all soldiers Roman, Latin, Italian, no difference. A man of property has property to defend. The survival of the State and of his property matter to him. He is willing to put his heart into fighting. For that reason, we have been reluctant to assume an overseas empire, and have tried time and time again to avoid owning provinces. "But after the defeat of Perseus, we failed in our laudable attempt to introduce self-government into Macedonia because the Macedonians could not understand any system save autocracy. So we had to take Macedonia over as a province of Rome because we couldn't afford to have barbarian tribes invading the west coast of Macedonia, so close to our own Italy's east coast. The defeat of Carthage forced us to administer Carthage's empire in Spain, or risk some other nation's taking possession. We gave the bulk of African Carthage to the kings of Numidia and kept only a small province around Carthage itself in the name of Rome, to guard against any Punic revival and yet, look at what has happened because we gave so much away to the kings of Numidia! Now we find ourselves obliged to take over Africa in order to protect our own small province and crush the blatantly expansionist policies of one man, Jugurtha. For all it takes, Conscript Fathers, is one man, and we are undone! King Attalus willed us Asia when he died, and we are still trying to avoid our provincial responsibilities there! Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus opened up the whole coast of Gaul between Liguria and Nearer Spain so that we had a safe, properly Roman corridor between Italy and Spain for our armies but out of that, we found ourselves obliged to create yet another province." He cleared his throat; such a silence! "Our soldiers now fight their campaigns outside of Italy. They are away for long periods, their farms and homes are neglected, their wives unfaithful, their children unsired. With the result that we see fewer and fewer volunteers, are forced increasingly to call up men in the levies. No man who farms the land or conducts a business wants to be away from it for five or six or even seven years! And when he is discharged, he is liable to be called up again the moment the volunteers don't volunteer.'' The deep voice grew somber. "But more than anything else, so many of these men have died during the past fifteen years! And they have not replaced themselves. The whole of Italy is empty of men with the necessary property qualifications to form a Roman army in the traditional mould." The voice changed again, was raised to echo round the naked rafters of the ancient hall, built during the time of King Tullus Hostilius. "Well, ever since the time of the second war against Carthage, the recruiting officers have had to wink an eye at the property qualifications. And after the loss of the younger Carbo's army six years ago, we have even admitted to the ranks men who couldn't afford to buy their own armor, let alone equip themselves in other ways. But it has been covert, unapproved, and always a last resort. "Those days are over, Conscript Fathers. I, Gaius Marius, consul of the Senate and People of Rome, am hereby serving notice upon the members of this House that I intend to recruit my soldiers, not conscript them I want willing soldiers, not men who would rather be at home! And where am I going to find some twenty thousand volunteers, you ask? Why, the answer's simple! I am going to seek them among the Head Count, the absolute bottom of the social strata, too poor to be admitted to one of the Five Classes I am going to seek my volunteers among those who have no money, no property, and very often no steady job I am going to seek my volunteers among those who never before have been offered the opportunity to fight for their country, to fight for Rome!" A swelling murmur arose, and increased, and increased, until the whole House was thundering: "No! No! No!" Showing no anger, Marius waited patiently, even as the anger of others beat around him tangibly in shaking fists and purpling faces, the scraping of more than two hundred folding stools as the swishing togas of men leaping to their feet pushed them across the old stone floor, buffed by the passage of centuries of feet. Finally the noise died down; roused to ire though they were, they knew they hadn't yet heard it all, and curiosity was a powerful force, even in the irate. "You can scream and yell and howl until vinegar turns into wine!" shouted Marius when he could make himself heard. "But I am serving notice upon you here and now that this is what I am going to do! And I don't need your permission to do it, either! There's no law on the tablets says I cannot do it but within a matter of days there will be a law on the tablets says I can do it! A law which says that any lawfully elected senior magistrate in need of an army may seek it among the capite censi the Head Count the proletarii. For I, senators, am taking my case to the People!" "Never!" cried Dalmaticus. "Over my dead body!" cried Scipio Nasica. "No! No! No!" cried the whole House, thundering. "Wait!" cried the lone voice of Scaurus. "Wait, wait! Let me refute him!" But no one heard. The Curia Hostilia, home of the Senate since the foundation of the Republic, shuddered to its very foundations from the noise of infuriated senators. "Come on!" said Marius, and swept out of the House, followed by his quaestor, Sulla, and his tribune of the plebs, Titus Manlius Mancinus. The Forum crowds had gathered at the first rumblings of the storm, and found the well of the Comitia already packed with Marius's supporters. Down the steps of the Curia and across to the rostra along the back of the Comitia marched the consul Marius and the tribune of the plebs Mancinus; the quaestor Sulla, a patrician, remained on the Senate House steps. "Hear ye, hear ye!" roared Mancinus. "The Assembly of the Plebs is called into session! I declare a contio, a preliminary discussion!" Forth to the speaker's platform at the front of the rostra stepped Gaius Marius, and turned so that he partially faced the Comitia and partially the open space of the lower Forum; those on the steps of the Senate House mostly saw his back, and when all the senators save the few patricians began to move down the tiers of the Comitia to where from its floor they could look straight at Marius and harass him, the ranks of his clients and supporters who had been summoned to the Comitia in readiness suddenly blocked their onward passage, and would not let them through. There were scuffles and punches, teeth were bared and tempers flared, but the Marian lines held. Only the nine other tribunes of the plebs were allowed to proceed to the rostra, where they stood along its back with stern faces and silently debated whether it was going to be possible to interpose a veto and live. "People of Rome, they say I cannot do what is necessary to ensure the survival of Rome!" Marius shouted. "Rome needs soldiers, Rome needs soldiers desperately! We are surrounded on all fronts by enemies, yet the noble Conscript Fathers of the Senate as usual are more concerned with preserving their inherited right to rule than ensuring the survival of Rome! It is they, People of Rome, who have sucked the blood of Romans and Latins and Italians dry by their indifferent exploitation of the classes of men who have traditionally been Rome's soldiers! For I say to you, there are none of these men left! Those who haven't died on some battlefield thanks to the greed, the arrogance, and the stupidity of some consular commander are either too maimed to be of further use as soldiers, or currently serving in the legions! "But there is an alternative source of soldiers, a source ready and eager to volunteer to serve Rome as soldiers! I am referring to the men of the Head Count, the citizens of Rome or of Italy who are too poor to have a vote in the Centuries, too poor to own land or businesses, too poor to buy soldiers' gear! But it is time, People of Rome, that the thousands upon thousands of these men should be called upon to do more for Rome than queue up whenever cheap grain is offered, push and shove their way into the Circus on holidays in search of gratification, breed sons and daughters they cannot feed! The fact that they have no worth should not make them worthless! Nor do I for one believe that they love Rome any less than any man of substance! In fact, I believe their love for Rome is purer by far than the love displayed by most of the honorable members of the Senate!" Marius raised himself up in swelling indignation, threw wide his arms to embrace, it seemed, the whole of Rome. "I am here with the College of Tribunes at my back to seek a mandate from you, the People, which the Senate will not give me! I am asking you for the right to call upon the military potential of the Head Count! I want to turn the men of the Head Count from useless insignificants into soldiers of Rome's legions! I want to offer the men of the Head Count gainful employment a profession rather than a trade! a future for themselves and their families with honor and prestige and an opportunity to advance! I want to offer them a consciousness of dignity and worth, a chance to play no mean part in the onward progress of Rome the Mighty!" He paused; the Comitia stared up at him in profound silence, all eyes fixed on his fierce face, his glaring eyes, the indomitable thrust of chin and chest. "The Conscript Fathers of the Senate are denying these thousands upon thousands of men their chance! Denying me the chance to call upon their services, their loyalty, their love of Rome! And for what? Because the Conscript Fathers of the Senate love Rome more than I do? No! Because they love themselves and their own class more than they love Rome or anything else! So I have come to you, the People, to ask you to give me and give Rome! what the Senate will not! Give me the capite censi, People of Rome! Give me the humblest, the lowliest! Give me the chance to turn them into a body of citizens Rome can be proud of, a body of citizens Rome can make use of instead of merely enduring, a body of citizens equipped and trained and paid by the State to serve the State with hearts and bodies as soldiers! Will you give me what I ask? Will you give Rome what Rome needs?" And the shouting began, the cheering, the stamping of feet, the audible breaking of a tradition ten centuries old. Nine tribunes of the plebs looked sideways at each other, and agreed without speaking not to interpose a veto; for all of them liked living.
"Gaius Marius," said Marcus Aemilius Scaurus in the House when the lex Manila had been passed, empowering the consuls of the day to call for volunteers among the capite censi, "is a ravening, slavering wolfshead, running amok! Gaius Marius is a pernicious ulcer upon the body of this House! Gaius Marius is the single most obvious reason why, Conscript Fathers, we should close our ranks against New Men, never even permit them a seat at the very back of this venerable establishment! What, I ask you, does a Gaius Marius know about the nature of Rome, the imperishable ideals of its traditional government? "I am Princeps Senatus the Leader of the House and in all my many years within this body of men I love as the manifestation of the spirit of Rome it is, never have I seen a more insidious, dangerous, piratical individual than Gaius Marius! Twice within three months he has taken the hallowed prerogatives of the Senate and smashed them on the uncouth altar of the People! First he nullified our senatorial edict giving Quintus Caecilius Metellus an extended command in Africa. And now, to gratify his own ambitions, he exploits the ignorance of the People to grant him powers of recruitment of soldiers that are unnatural, unconscionable, unreasonable, and unacceptable!" The meeting was heavily attended; of the 300 living senators, over 280 had come to this session of the House, winkled out of their homes and even their sickbeds by Scaurus and the other leaders. And they sat upon their little folding stools in the three rising tiers along either side of the Curia Hostilia like a huge flock of snowy hens gone to roost on their perches, only the purple-bordered togas of those who had been senior magistrates to relieve that blinding, shadowless mass of white. The ten tribunes of the plebs sat upon their long wooden bench on the floor of the House, to one side of the only other magistrates accorded the distinction of isolation from the main body two curule aediles, six praetors, and two consuls all seated upon their beautiful carved ivory chairs raised up on a dais at the far end of the hall, opposite the pair of huge bronze doors which gave entrance to the chamber. On that dais sat Gaius Marius, next to and slightly behind the senior consul, Cassius, his isolation purely one of the spirit; Marius appeared calm, content, almost catlike, and he listened to Scaurus without dismay, without anger. The deed was done. He had his mandate. He could afford to be magnanimous. "This House must do whatever it can to limit the power Gaius Marius has just given the Head Count. For the Head Count must remain what it has always been a useless collection of hungry mouths we who are more privileged must care for, feed, and tolerate without ever asking it for any service in return. For while it does no work for us and has no use, it is no more and no less than a simple dependant, Rome's wife who toils not, and has no power, and no voice. It can claim nothing from us that we are not willing to give it, for it does nothing. It simply is. "But thanks to Gaius Marius we now find ourselves faced with all the problems and grotesqueries of what I must call an army of professional soldiers men who have no other source of income, no other way of making a living men who will want to stay on in the army from campaign to campaign men who will cost the State enormous sums of money. And, Conscript Fathers, men who will claim they now have a voice in Rome's scheme of things, for they do Rome a service, they work for Rome. You heard the People. We of the Senate, who administer the Treasury and apportion out Rome's public funds, must dig into Rome's coffers and find the money to equip Gaius Marius's army with arms, armor, and all the other gear of war. We are also directed by the People to pay these soldiers on a regular basis instead of at the very end of a campaign, when booty is available to help defray the outlay. The cost of fielding armies of insolvent men will financially break the back of the State, there can be no doubt of it." "Nonsense, Marcus Aemilius!" Marius interjected. "There is more money in Rome's Treasury than Rome knows what to do with because, Conscript Fathers, you never spend any of it! All you do is hoard it." The rumbling began, the faces started to mottle, but Scaurus held up his right arm for silence, and got it. "Yes, Rome's Treasury is full," he said. "That is how a treasury should be! Even with the cost of the public works I instituted while censor, the Treasury remains full. But in the past there have been times when it was very empty indeed. The three wars we fought against Carthage brought us to the very brink of fiscal disaster. So what, I ask you, is wrong with making sure that never happens again? While her Treasury is full, Rome is prosperous." "Rome will be more prosperous because the men of her Head Count have money in their purses to spend," said Marius. "That is not true, Gaius Marius!" cried Scaurus. "The men of the Head Count will fritter their money away it will disappear from circulation and never grow." He walked from where he stood at his stool in the front row of the seated tiers, and positioned himself near the great bronze doors, where both sides of the House could see as well as hear him. "I say to you, Conscript Fathers, that we must resist with might and main in the future whenever a consul avails himself of the lex Manila and recruits among the Head Count. The People have specifically ordered us to pay for Gaius Marius's army, but there is nothing in the law as it has been inscribed to compel us to pay for the equipping of whichever is the next army of paupers! And that is the tack we must take. Let the consul of the future cull all the paupers he wants to fill up the ranks of his legions but when he applies to us, the custodians of Rome's monies, for the funds to pay his legions as well as to outfit them, we must turn him down. "The State cannot afford to field an army of paupers, it is that simple. The Head Count is feckless, irresponsible, without respect for property or gear. Is a man whose shirt of mail was given to him free of charge, its cost borne by the State, going to look after his shirt of mail? No! Of course he won't! He'll leave it lying about in salt air or downpours to rust, he'll pull up stakes in a camp and forget to take it with him, he'll drape it over the foot of the bed of some foreign whore and then wonder why she stole it in the night to equip her Scordisci boyfriend! And what about the time when these paupers are no longer fit enough to serve in the legions? Our traditional soldiers are owners of property, they have homes to return to, money invested, a little solid, tangible worth to them! Where pauper veterans will be a menace, for how many of them will save any of the money the State pays them? How many will bank their share of the booty? No, they will emerge at the end of their years of paid service without homes to go to, without the wherewithal to live. Ah yes, I hear you say, but what's strange about that, to them? They live from hand to mouth always. But, Conscript Fathers, these military paupers will grow used to the State's feeding them, clothing them, housing them. And when upon retirement all that is taken away, they will grumble, just as any wife who has been spoiled will grumble when the money is no longer there. Are we then going to be called upon to find a pension for these pauper veterans? "It must not be allowed to happen! I repeat, fellow members of this Senate I lead, that our future tactics must be designed to pull the teeth of those men conscienceless enough to recruit among the Head Count by adamantly refusing to contribute one sestertius toward the cost of their armies!" Gaius Marius rose to reply. "A more shortsighted and ridiculous attitude would be hard to find in a Parthian satrap's harem, Marcus Aemilius! Why won't you understand? If Rome is to hold on to what is even at this moment Rome's, then Rome must invest in all her people, including the people who have no entitlement to vote in the Centuries! We are wasting our farmers and small businessmen by sending them to fight, especially when we dower them with brainless incompetents like Carbo and Silanus oh, are you there, Marcus Junius Silanus? I am sorry! “What's the matter with availing ourselves of the services of a very large section of our society which until this time has been about as much use to Rome as tits on a bull? If the only real objection we can find is that we're going to have to be a bit freer with the mouldering contents of the Treasury, then we're as stupid as we are shortsighted! You, Marcus Aemilius, are convinced that the men of the Head Count will prove dismal soldiers. Well, I think they'll prove wonderful soldiers! Are we to continue to moan about paying them? Are we going to deny them a retirement gift at the end of their active service? That's what you want, Marcus Aemilius! "But I would like to see the State part with some of Rome's public lands so that upon retirement, a soldier of the Head Count can be given a small parcel of land to farm or to sell. A pension of sorts. And an infusion of some badly needed new blood into the more than decimated ranks of our smallholding farmers. How can that be anything but good for Rome? Gentlemen, gentlemen, why can't you see that Rome can grow richer only if Rome is willing to share its prosperity with the sprats in its sea as well as the whales?" But the House was on its feet in an uproar, and Lucius Cassius Longinus, the senior consul, decided prudence was the order of the day. So he closed the meeting, and dismissed the Conscript Fathers of the Senate.
Marius and Sulla set out to find 20,480 infantrymen, 5,120 noncombatant freemen, 4,000 noncombatant slaves, 2,000 cavalry troopers, and 2,000 noncombatant cavalry support men. "I'll do Rome; you can do Latium," said Marius, purring. "I very much doubt that either of us will have to go as far afield as Italy. We're on our way, Lucius Cornelius! In spite of the worst they could do, we're on our way. I've conscripted Gaius Julius, our father-in-law, to deal with arms and armor manufactories and contractors, and I've sent to Africa for his sons we can use them. I don't find either Sextus or Gaius Junior the stuff true leaders are made of, but they're excellent subordinates, as hardworking and intelligent as they are loyal." He led the way into his study, where two men were waiting. One was a senator in his middle thirties whose face Sulla vaguely knew, the other was a lad of perhaps eighteen. Marius proceeded to introduce them to his quaestor. "Lucius Cornelius, this is Aulus Manlius, whom I've asked to be one of my senior legates." That was the senator. One of the patrician Manliuses, thought Sulla; Marius did indeed have friends and clients from all walks. "And this young man is Quintus Sertorius, the son of a cousin of mine, Maria of Nersia, always called Ria. I'm seconding him to my personal staff." A Sabine, thought Sulla; they were, he had heard, of tremendous value in an army a little unorthodox, terrifically brave, indomitable of spirit. "All right, it's time to get to work," said the man of action, the man who had been waiting over twenty years to implement his ideas as to what the Roman army ought to be. "We will divide our duties. Aulus Manlius, you're in charge of getting together the mules, carts, equipment, non-combatants, and all the staples of supply from food to artillery. My brothers-in-law, the two Julius Caesars, will be here any day now, and they'll assist you. I want you ready to sail for Africa by the end of March. You can have any other help you think you may need, but might I suggest you start by finding your noncombatants, and cull the best of them to pitch in with you as you go? That way, you'll save money, as well as begin to train them." The lad Sertorius was watching Marius, apparently fascinated, while Sulla found the lad Sertorius more fascinating than he did Marius, used as he was by now to Marius. Not that Sertorius was sexually attractive, he wasn't; but he did have a power about him that was odd in one so young. Physically he promised to be immensely powerful when he reached maturity, and maybe that contributed to Sulla's impression, for though he was tall, he was already so solidly muscular that he gave an impression of being short; he had a square, thick-necked head and a pair of remarkable eyes, light brown, deep-set, and compelling. "I myself intend to sail by the end of April with the first group of soldiers," Marius went on, gazing at Sulla. "It will be up to you, Lucius Cornelius, to continue organizing the rest of the legions, and find me some decent cavalry. If you can get it all done and sail by the end of Quinctilis, I'll be happy." He turned his head to grin at young Sertorius. "As for you, Quintus Sertorius, I'll keep you on the hop, rest assured! I can't have it said that I keep relatives of mine around doing nothing." The lad smiled, slowly and thoughtfully. "I like to hop, Gaius Marius," he said.
The Head Count flocked to enlist; Rome had never seen anything like it, nor had anyone in the Senate expected such a response from a section of the community it had never bothered to think about save in times of grain shortages, when it was prudent to supply the Head Count with cheap grain to avoid troublesome rioting. Within scant days the number of volunteer recruits of full Roman citizen status had reached 20,480 but Marius declined to stop recruiting. "If they're there to take, we'll take them," he said to Sulla. "Metellus has six legions, I don't see why I ought not to have six legions. Especially with the State funding the costs! It won't ever happen again, if we are to believe dear Scaurus, and Rome may have need of those two extra legions, my instincts tell me. We won't get a proper campaign mounted this year anyway, so we'll do better to concentrate on training and equipping. The nice thing is, these six legions will all be Roman citizen legions, not Italian auxiliaries. That means we still have the Italian proletarii to tap in years to come, as well as plenty more Roman Head Count." It all went according to plan, which was not surprising when Gaius Marius was in the command tent, Sulla found out. By the end of March, Aulus Manlius was en route from Neapolis to Utica, his transports stuffed with mules, ballistae, catapults, arms, tack, and all the thousand and one items which gave an army teeth. The moment Aulus Manlius was landed in Utica, the transports returned to Neapolis and picked up Gaius Marius, who sailed with only two of his six legions. Sulla remained behind in Italy to get the other four legions outfitted and into order, and find the cavalry. In the end he went north to the regions of Italian Gaul on the far side of the Padus River, where he recruited magnificent horse troopers of Gallo-Celtic background. There were other changes in Marius's army, above and beyond its Head Count composition. For these were men who had no tradition of military service, and so were completely ignorant of what it entailed. And so were in no position to resist change, or to oppose it. For many years the old tactical unit called the maniple had proven too small to contend with the massive, undisciplined armies the legions often had to fight; the cohort three times the size of the maniple had been gradually supplanting it in actual practice. Yet no one had officially regrouped the legions into cohorts rather than maniples, or restructured its centurion hierarchy to deal with cohorts rather than maniples. But Gaius Marius did, that spring and summer of the year of his first consulship. Except as a pretty parade-ground unit, the maniple now officially ceased to exist; the cohort was supreme. However, there were unforeseen disadvantages in fielding an army of proletarii. The old-style propertied soldiers of Rome were mostly literate and numerate, so had no difficulty recognizing flags, numbers, letters, symbols. Marius's army was mostly illiterate, barely numerate. Sulla instituted a program whereby each unit of eight men who tented and messed together had at least one man in it who could read and write, and for the reward of seniority over his fellows, was given the duty of teaching his comrades all about numbers, letters, symbols, and standards, and if possible was to teach them all to read and write. But progress was slow; full literacy would have to wait until the winter rains in Africa rendered campaigning impossible. Marius himself devised a simple, highly emotive new rallying point for his legions, and made sure all ranks were indoctrinated with superstitious awe and reverence for his new rallying point. He gave each legion a beautiful silver spread-winged eagle upon a very tall, silver-clad pole; the eagle was to be carried by the aquilifer, the man considered the best specimen in his whole legion, exclusively clad in a lion skin as well as silver armor. The eagle, said Marius, was the legion's symbol for Rome, and every soldier was obliged to swear a dreadful oath that he would die rather than allow his legion's eagle to fall into the hands of the Enemy. Of course he knew exactly what he was doing. After half a lifetime under the colors and being the kind of man he was he had formed firm opinions and knew a great deal more about the actual individual ranker soldiers than any high aristocrat. His ignoble origins had put him in a perfect position to observe, just as his superior intelligence had put him in a perfect position to make deductions from his observations. His personal achievements underrated, his undeniable abilities mostly used for the advancement of his betters, Gaius Marius had been waiting for a very long time before his first consulship arrived and thinking, thinking, thinking.
Quintus Caecilius Metellus's reaction to the vast upheaval Marius had provoked in Rome surprised even his son, for Metellus was always thought a rational, controlled kind of man. Yet when he got the news that his command in Africa had been taken away from him and given to Marius, he went publicly mad, weeping and wailing, tearing his hair, lacerating his breast, all in the marketplace of Utica rather than the privacy of his offices, and much to the fascination of the Punic population. Even after the first shock of his grief passed, and he withdrew to his residence, the merest mention of Marius's name was enough to bring on another bout of noisy tears and many unintelligible references to Numantia, some trio or other, and some pigs. The letter he received from Lucius Cassius Longinus, senior consul-elect, did much to cheer him up, however, and he spent some days organizing the demobilization of his six legions, having obtained their consent to re-enlist for service with Lucius Cassius the moment they reached Italy. For, as Cassius told him in the letter, Cassius was determined that he was going to do a great deal better in Gaul-across-the-Alps against the Germans and their allies the Volcae Tectosages than Marius the Upstart could possibly do in Africa, troopless as he would be. Ignorant of Marius's solution to his problem (in fact, he would not learn of it until he arrived back in Rome), Metellus quit Utica at the end of March, taking all six of his legions with him. He chose to go to the port of Hadrumetum, over a hundred miles to the southeast of Utica, and there sulked until he heard that Marius had arrived in the province to assume command. In Utica to wait for Marius he left Publius Rutilius Rufus. So when Marius sailed in, it was Rutilius who greeted him on the pier, Rutilius who formally handed over the province. "Where's Piggle-wiggle?" asked Marius as they strolled off to the governor's palace. "Indulging in a monumental snit way down in Hadrumetum, along with all his legions," said Rutilius, sighing. "He has taken a vow to Jupiter Stator that he will not see you or speak to you.'' "Silly fool," said Marius, grinning. "Did you get my letters about the capite censi and the new legions?" "Of course. And I'm a trifle tender around the ears due to the paeans of praise Aulus Manlius has sung about you since he got here. A brilliant scheme, Gaius Marius." But when he looked at Marius, Rutilius didn't smile. "They'll make you pay for your temerity, old friend. Oh, how they'll make you pay!" "They won't, you know. I've got them right where I want them and by all the gods, I swear that's the way I'm going to keep them until the day I die! I am going to grind the Senate into the dust, Publius Rutilius." "You won't succeed. In the end, it's the Senate will grind you into the dust." "Never!" And from that opinion Rutilius Rufus could not budge him. Utica was looking its best, its plastered buildings all freshly whitewashed after the winter rains, a gleaming and spotless town of modestly high buildings, flowering trees, a languorous warmth, a colorfully clad people. The little squares and plazas were thronged with street stalls and cafes; shade trees grew in their centers; the cobbles and paving stones looked clean and swept. Like most Roman, Ionian Greek, and Punic towns, it was provided with a good system of drains and sewers, had public baths for the populace and a good water supply aqueducted in from the lovely sloping mountains blue with distance all around it. "Publius Rutilius, what are you going to do?" asked Marius once they reached the governor's study, and were settled, both of them amused at the way Metellus's erstwhile servants now bowed and scraped to Marius. "Would you like to stay on here as my legate? I didn't offer Aulus Manlius the top post." Rutilius shook his head emphatically. "No, Gaius Marius, I'm going home. Since Piggle-wiggle is leaving, my term is up, and I've had enough of Africa. Quite candidly, I don't fancy seeing poor Jugurtha in chains and now that you're in command, that's how he's going to end up. No, it's Rome and a bit of leisure for me, a chance to do some writing and cultivate friends." "What if one day not so far in the future, I were to ask you to run for the consulship with me as your colleague?" Rutilius threw him a puzzled yet very keen glance. "Now what are you plotting?" "It has been prophesied, Publius Rutilius, that I will be consul of Rome no less than seven times." Any other man might have laughed, or sneered, or simply refused to believe. But not Publius Rutilius Rufus. He knew his Marius. "A great fate. It raises you above your equals, and I'm too Roman to approve of that. But if such is the pattern of your fate, you cannot fight it, any more than I can. Would I like to be consul? Yes, of course I would! I consider it my duty to ennoble my family. Only save me for a year when you're going to need me, Gaius Marius." "I will indeed," said Marius, satisfied.
When the news of the elevation of Marius to the command of the war reached the two African kings, Bocchus took fright and bolted home to Mauretania immediately, leaving Jugurtha to face Marius unsupported. Not that Jugurtha was cowed by his father-in-law's desertion, any more than he was cowed by the idea of Marius's new position; he recruited among the Gaetuli and bided his time, leaving it to Marius to make the first move. By the end of June four of his six legions were in the Roman African province, and Marius felt pleased enough with their progress to lead them into Numidia. Concentrating on sacking towns, plundering farmlands, and fighting minor engagements, he blooded his lowly recruits and welded them into a formidable little army. However, when Jugurtha saw the size of the Roman force and understood the implications of its Head Count composition, he decided to risk the chance of battle, recapture Cirta. But Marius arrived before the city could fall, leaving Jugurtha no option save a battle, and at last the Head Count soldiers were offered the opportunity to confound their Roman critics. A jubilant Marius was able afterward to write home to the Senate that his pauper troops had behaved magnificently, fought not one iota less bravely or enthusiastically because they had no vested property interests in Rome. In fact, the Head Count army of Marius defeated Jugurtha so decisively that Jugurtha himself was obliged to throw away his shield and spear in order to escape uncaptured. The moment King Bocchus heard of it, he sent an embassage to Marius begging that he be allowed to re-enter the Roman client fold; and when Marius failed to respond, he sent more embassages. Finally Marius did consent to see a deputation, which hurried home to tell the King that Marius didn't care to do business with him on any level. So Bocchus was left to chew his nails down to the quick and wonder why he had ever succumbed to Jugurtha's blandishments. Marius himself remained wholly occupied in removing from Jugurtha every square mile of settled Numidian territory, his aim being to make it impossible for the King to seek recruits or supplies in the rich river valleys and coastal areas of his realm. And make it impossible for the King to accrue additional revenues. Only among the Gaetuli and Garamantes, the inland Berber tribes, could Jugurtha now be sure of finding shelter and soldiers, be sure his armaments and his treasures were safe from the Romans.
Julilla gave birth to a sickly seven-months baby girl in June, and in late Quinctilis her sister, Julia, produced a big, healthy, full-term baby boy, a little brother for Young Marius. Yet it was Julilla's miserable child who lived, Julia's strong second son who died, when the foetid summer vapors of Sextilis curled their malignant tentacles among the hills of Rome, and enteric fevers became epidemic. "A girl's all right, I suppose," said Sulla to his wife, "but before I leave for Africa you're going to be pregnant again, and this time you're going to have a boy." Unhappy herself at having given Sulla a puling, puking girl-baby, Julilla entered into the making of a boy with great enthusiasm. Oddly enough, she had survived her first pregnancy and the actual birth of her tiny daughter better by far than her sister, Julia, had, though she was thin, not well, and perpetually fretful. Where Julia, better built and better armed emotionally against the tempests of marriage and maternity, suffered badly that second time. "At least we have a girl to marry off to someone we need when the time comes," said Julilla to Julia in the autumn, after the death of Julia's second son, and by which time Julilla knew she was carrying another child. "Hopefully this one will be a boy." Her nose ran; she sniffled, hunted for her linen handkerchief. Still grieving, Julia found herself with less patience and sympathy for her sister than of yore, and understood at last why their mother, Marcia, had said and grimly that Julilla was permanently damaged. Funny, she thought now, that you could grow up with someone, yet never really understand what was happening to her. Julilla was ageing at the gallop not physically, not even mentally a process of the spirit, rather, intensely self-destructive. The starvation had undermined her in some way, left her unable to lead a happy kind of life. Or maybe this present Julilla had always been there beneath the giggles and the silliness, the enchanting girlish tricks which had so charmed the rest of the family. One wants to believe the illness caused this change, she thought sadly; one needs to find an external cause, for the alternative is to admit that the weakness was always there. She would never be anything save beautiful, Julilla, with that magical honey-amber coloring, her grace of movement, her flawless features. But these days there were circles beneath her huge eyes, two lines already fissuring her face between cheeks and nose, a mouth whose dented corners now turned down. Yes, she looked weary, discontented, restless. A faint note of complaint had crept into her speech, and still she heaved those enormous sighs, a habit quite unconscious but very, very irritating. As was her tendency to sniffle. "Have you got any wine?" Julilla asked suddenly. Julia blinked in simple astonishment, aware that she was faintly scandalized, and annoyed at herself for such a priggish reaction. After all, women did drink wine these days! Nor was it regarded as a sign of moral collapse anymore, save in circles Julia herself found detestably intolerant and sanctimonious. But when your young sister, barely twenty years old and brought up in the house of Gaius Julius Caesar, asked you for wine in the middle of the morning without a meal or a man in sight yes, it was a shock! "Of course I have wine," she said. "I'd love a cup," said Julilla, who had fought against asking; Julia was bound to comment, and it was unpleasant to expose oneself to the disapproval of one's older, stronger, more successful sister. Yet she hadn't been able to refrain from asking. The interview was difficult, the more so because it was overdue. These days Julilla found herself out of patience with her family, uninterested in them, bored by them. Especially by the admired Julia, wife of the consul, rapidly becoming one of Rome's most esteemed young matrons. Never put a foot wrong, that was Julia. Happy with her lot, in love with her ghastly Gaius. Marius, model wife, model mother. How boring indeed. "Do you usually drink wine in the mornings?" Julia asked, as casually as she could. A shrug, a flapping and fluttering of hands, a brightly burning look that acknowledged the shaft, yet refused to take it seriously. "Well, Sulla does, and he likes to have company." "Sulla? Do you call him by his cognomen!" Julilla laughed. "Oh, Julia, you are old-fashioned! Of course I call him by his cognomen! We don't live inside the Senate House, you know! Everyone in our circles uses the cognomen these days, it's chic. Besides, Sulla likes me to call him Sulla he says being called Lucius Cornelius makes him feel a thousand years old." "Then I daresay I am old-fashioned," said Julia, making an effort to be casual. A sudden smile lit her face; perhaps it was the light, but she looked younger than her younger sister, and more beautiful. "Mind you, I do have some excuse! Gaius Marius doesn't have a cognomen." The wine came. Julilla poured a glass of it, but ignored the alabaster decanter of water. "I've often wondered about that," she said, and drank deeply. "Surely after he's beaten Jugurtha he'll find a really impressive cognomen to assume. Trust that stuck-up sourpuss Metellus to talk the Senate into letting him celebrate a triumph, and assume the cognomen Numidicus! Numidicus ought to have been kept for Gaius Marius!" "Metellus Numidicus," said Julia with punctilious regard for facts, "qualified for his triumph, Julilla. He killed enough Numidians and brought home enough booty. And if he wanted to call himself Numidicus, and the Senate said he might, then that's that, isn't it? Besides, Gaius Marius always says that the simple Latin name of his father is good enough for him. There's only one Gaius Marius, where there are dozens of Caecilius Metelluses. You wait and see my husband isn't going to need to distinguish himself from the herd by a device as artificial as a cognomen. My husband is going to be the First Man in Rome and by dint of nothing except superior ability." Julia eulogizing the likes of Gaius Marius was quite sickening; Julilla's feelings about her brother-in-law were a mixture of natural gratitude for his generosity, and a contempt acquired from her new friends, all of whom despised him as an upstart, and in consequence despised his wife. So Julilla refilled her cup, and changed the subject. "This isn't a bad wine, sister. Mind you, Marius has the money to indulge himself, I daresay." She drank, but less deeply than from her first cup. "Are you in love with Marius?" she asked, suddenly realizing that she honestly didn't know. A blush! Annoyed at betraying herself, Julia sounded defensive when she answered. "Of course I'm in love with him! And I miss him dreadfully, as a matter of fact. Surely there's nothing wrong with that, even among those in your circles. Don't you love Lucius Cornelius?" "Yes!" said Julilla, who now found herself on the defensive. "But I do not miss him now he's gone, I can assure you! For one thing, if he stays away for two or three years, I won't be pregnant again the minute this one is born." She sniffled. "Waddling around weighing a talent more than I ought is not my idea of happiness. I like to float like a feather, I hate feeling heavy! I've either been pregnant or getting over a pregnancy the whole time I've been married. Ugh!" Julia held her temper. "It's your job to be pregnant," she said coolly. "Why is that women never have any choice in a job?" asked Julilla, beginning to feel tearful. "Oh, don't be ridiculous!" Julia snapped. "Well, it's an awful way to have to live one's life," said Julilla mutinously, feeling the effects of the wine at last. And it made her cheer up; she summoned a conscious effort, and smiled. "Let's not quarrel, Julia! It's bad enough that Mama can't find it in herself to be civil to me." And that was true, Julia acknowledged; Marcia had never forgiven Julilla for her conduct over Sulla, though quite why was a mystery. Their father's frostiness had lasted a very few days, after which he treated Julilla with all the warmth and joy her beginning recovery inspired. But their mother's frostiness persisted. Poor, poor Julilla! Did Sulla really like her to drink wine with him in the mornings, or was that an excuse? Sulla, indeed! It lacked respect.
Sulla arrived in Africa at the end of the first week in September with the last two legions and two thousand magnificent Celtic cavalrymen from Italian Gaul. He found Marius in the throes of mounting a major expedition into Numidia, and was hailed gladly, and put immediately to work. "I've got Jugurtha on the run," Marius said jubilantly, "even without my full army. Now that you're here, we'll see some real action, Lucius Cornelius." Sulla passed over letters from Julia and from Gaius Julius Caesar, then screwed up his courage to offer condolences for the death of Marius's unseen second son. "Please accept my sympathy for the passing of your little Marcus Marius," he said, awkwardly aware that his own ratlike daughter, Cornelia Sulla, was doggedly continuing to survive. A shadow crossed Marius's face, then was resolutely wiped away. "I thank you, Lucius Cornelius. There's time to make more children, and I have Young Marius. You left my wife and Young Marius well?" "Very well. As are all the Julius Caesars." "Good!" Private considerations were shelved; Marius put his mail on a side table and moved to his desk, where a huge map painted on specially treated calfskin was spread out. "You're just in time to sample Numidia at first hand. We're off to Capsa in eight days' time." The keen brown eyes searched Sulla's face, peeling and splotchy. "I suggest, Lucius Cornelius, that you explore the Utican marketplaces until you find a really strong hat with as wide a brim as possible. It's obvious you've been out and around in Italy all summer. But the sun of Numidia is even hotter and harsher. You'll burn like tinder here." It was true; Sulla's flawless white complexion, hitherto sheltered by a life lived largely indoors, had suffered during his months of traveling throughout Italy, exercising troops, and learning himself as surreptitiously as possible. Pride had not permitted him to skulk in the shade while others braved the light, and pride had dictated that he wear the Attic helmet of his high estate, headgear which did nothing to save his skin. The worst of the sunburn was now over, but so little pigment did he possess that there was no deepening of his color, and the healed and healing areas were as white as ever. His arms had fared better than his face; it was possible that after sufficient exposure, arms and legs would manage to survive assault by the sun. But his face? Never. Some of this did Marius sense as he watched Sulla's reaction to his suggestion of a hat; he sat down and pointed to the tray of wine. "Lucius Cornelius, I have been laughed at for one thing or another since I first entered the legions at seventeen. At first I was too scrawny and undersized, then I was too big and clumsy. I had no Greek. I was an Italian, not a Roman. So I understand the humiliation you feel because you have a soft white skin. But it is more important to me, your commanding officer, that you maintain good health and bodily comfort, than that you present what you consider the proper image to your peers. Get yourself that hat! Keep it tied on with a woman's scarf, or ribbons, or a gold-and-purple cord if such is all you can find. And laugh at them! Cultivate it as an eccentricity. And soon, you'll find, no one even notices it anymore. Also, I recommend that you find some sort of ointment or cream thick enough to lessen the amount of sun your skin drinks up, and smear it on. And if the right one stinks of perfume, what of it?" Sulla nodded, grinned. "You're right, and it's excellent advice. I'll do as you say, Gaius Marius." "Good." A silence fell; Marius was edgy, restless, but not for any reason connected with Sulla, his quaestor understood. And all of a sudden Sulla knew what the reason was hadn't he labored under the same feeling himself? Wasn't all of Rome laboring under it? "The Germans," Sulla said. "The Germans," Marius said, and reached out a hand to pick up his beaker of well-watered wine. "Where have they come from, Lucius Cornelius, and where are they going?" Sulla shivered. "They're going to Rome, Gaius Marius. That is what we all feel in our bones. Where they come from, we don't know. A manifestation of Nemesis, perhaps. All we know is that they have no home. What we fear is that they intend to make our home theirs." "They'd be fools if they didn't," said Marius somberly. "These forays into Gaul are tentative, Lucius Cornelius they're simply biding their time, gathering up their courage. Barbarians they may be, but even the least barbarian knows that if he wants to settle anywhere near the Middle Sea, he must first deal with Rome. The Germans will come." "I agree. But you and I are not alone. That's the feeling from one end of Rome to the other these days. A ghastly worry, a worse fear of the inevitable. And our defeats don't help," said Sulla. "Everything conspires to help the Germans. There are those, even in the Senate, who walk round speaking of our doom as if it had already happened. There are those who speak of the Germans as a divine judgment.'' Marius sighed. "Not a judgment. A test." He put down his beaker and folded his hands. "Tell me what you know about Lucius Cassius. The official dispatches give me nothing to think about, they're so rarefied." Sulla grimaced. "Well, he took the six legions which came back from Africa with Metellus how do you like the 'Numidicus,' by the way? and he marched them all the way down the Via Domitia to Narbo, which it seems he reached about the beginning of Quinctilis, after eight weeks on the road. They were fit troops, and could have moved faster, but no one blames Lucius Cassius for going easy on them at the start of what promised to be a hard campaign. Thanks to Metellus Numidicus's determination not to leave a single man behind in Africa, all Cassius's legions were over strength by two cohorts, which meant he had close to forty thousand infantrymen, plus a big cavalry unit he augmented with tame Gauls along the way about three thousand altogether. A big army." Marius grunted. "They were good men." . “I know. I saw them, as a matter of fact, while they were marching up through the Padus Valley to the Mons Genava Pass. I was recruiting cavalry at the time. And though you may find this hard to believe, Gaius Marius, I had never before seen a Roman army on the march, rank after rank after rank, all properly armed and equipped, and with a decent baggage train. I'll never forget the sight of them!" He sighed. "Anyway. . . the Germans it seems had come to an understanding with the Volcae Tectosages, who claim to be their kinsmen, and had given them land to the north and east of Tolosa." "I admit the Gauls are almost as mysterious as the Germans, Lucius Cornelius," said Marius, leaning forward, "but according to the reports, Gauls and Germans are not of the same race. How could the Volcae Tectosages call the Germans kinsmen? After all, the Volcae Tectosages aren't even long-haired Gauls they've been living around Tolosa since before we've had Spain, and they speak Greek, and they trade with us. So why?" "I don't know. Nor it seems does anyone," said Sulla. "I'm sorry, Lucius Cornelius, I interrupted. Continue." "Lucius Cassius marched up from the coast at Narbo along our decent road Gnaeus Domitius made, and got his army into final fighting trim on good ground not far from Tolosa itself. The Volcae Tectosages had allied themselves completely with the Germans, so we faced a mighty force. However, Lucius Cassius brought them to battle in the right place, and beat them soundly. Typical barbarians, they didn't linger in the vicinity once they lost. Germans and Gauls alike ran for their lives away from Tolosa and our army." He paused, frowning, sipped more wine, put the beaker down. "I had this from Popillius Laenas himself, actually. They brought him across from Narbo by sea just before I sailed." "Poor wretch, he'll be the Senate's scapegoat," said Marius. "Of course," said Sulla, lifting his ginger brows. "The dispatches say Cassius followed the fleeing barbarians," Marius prompted. Sulla nodded. "Quite right, he did. They'd gone down both banks of the Garumna toward the ocean when Cassius saw them leave Tolosa, they were in complete disorder, as one would expect. I daresay he despised them as simple, rather oafish barbarians, because he didn't even bother to deploy our army in proper formation when he gave chase." "He didn't put his legions into a defensive marching order?" asked Marius incredulously. "No. He treated the pursuit like an ordinary route march, and took every bit of his baggage with him, including all the plunder he'd picked up when the Germans fled, leaving their wagons behind. As you know, our Roman-made road stops at Tolosa, so progress down the Garumna into alien territory was slow, and Cassius was mainly concerned that the baggage train be adequately protected." "Why didn't he leave the baggage in Tolosa?" Sulla shrugged. "Apparently he didn't trust what Volcae Tectosages remained behind in Tolosa. Anyway, by the time he'd penetrated down the Garumna as far as Burdigala, the Germans and the Gauls had had at least fifteen days to recover from their trouncing. They went to earth inside Burdigala, which is, it seems, far larger than the usual Gallic oppidum, and heavily fortified, not to mention stuffed with armaments. The local tribesmen didn't want a Roman army in their lands, so they helped the Germans and the Gauls in every way they could, from contributing more troops to offering them Burdigala. And then they set a very clever ambush for Lucius Cassius." "The fool!" said Marius. "Our army had camped not far to the east of Burdigala, and when Cassius decided to move on to attack the oppidum itself, he left the baggage train behind in the camp, under a guard of about half a legion sorry, I mean five cohorts one of these days I'll get the terminology right!" Marius found a smile. "You will, Lucius Cornelius, I guarantee it. But continue." "It seems Cassius was supremely confident he would encounter no organized resistance, so he marched our army toward Burdigala without even tightening ranks, or making the men march in square, or even sending out scouts. Our whole army fell into a perfect trap, and the Germans and the Gauls literally annihilated us. Cassius himself fell on the field so did his senior legate. All told, Popillius Laenas estimates thirty-five thousand Roman soldiers died at Burdigala," said Sulla. "Popillius Laenas himself had been left in command of the baggage train and camp, I understand?" asked Marius. "That's right. He heard the racket from the battlefield, of course, it drifted downwind for miles, and he was downwind of it. But the first he knew of the disaster was when no more than a handful of our men appeared, running for their lives to shelter in the camp. And though he waited and waited, no more of our men ever came. Instead, the Germans and the Gauls arrived. He says there were thousands upon thousands upon thousands of them, milling around the camp as thick as a plague of mice on a threshing floor. The ground was one mass of moving barbarians in a victory frenzy, lifted out of themselves, brandishing Roman heads on their spears and screaming war chants, all of them giants, their hair standing up stiff with clay, or hanging in great yellow braids down over their shoulders. A terrifying sight, Laenas said." "And one we're going to see a lot more of in the future, Lucius Cornelius," said Marius grimly. "Go on."
"It's true that Laenas could have resisted them. But for what? It seemed more sensible to him to save his pitiful remnant of our army, for our future use if possible. So that's what he did. He ran up the white flag and walked out himself to meet their chieftains, with his spear reversed and his scabbards empty. And they spared him, and they spared all of our surviving men. Then to show us what a greedy lot they thought we were, they even left us the baggage train! All they took from it were their own treasures which Cassius had looted." He drew a breath. "However, they did make Popillius Laenas and the rest pass under the yoke. After which they escorted them as far as Tolosa, and made sure they went on to Narbo." "We've passed under the yoke too often of late years," said Marius, clenching his fists. "Well, that is the chief reason for the general fury of indignation in Rome against Popillius Laenas, certainly," said Sulla. "He'll face treason charges, but from what he was saying to me, I doubt he'll stay to be tried. I think he plans to get together what portable valuables he has, and go into a voluntary exile at once." "It's the sensible move, at least he'll salvage something out of his ruin that way. If he waits to be tried, the State will confiscate the lot." Marius thumped the map. "But the fate of Lucius Cassius is not going to be our fate, Lucius Cornelius! By fair means or foul, we're going to rub Jugurtha's face in the mud and then we're going home to demand a mandate from the People to fight the Germans!" "Now that, Gaius Marius, is something I'll drink to!" said Sulla, lifting his beaker.
The expedition against Capsa was successful beyond all expectations, but as everyone admitted only thanks to Marius's brilliant management of the campaign. His legate Aulus Manlius, whose cavalry Marius didn't quite trust, because among its ranks were some Numidians claiming they were Rome's and Gauda's men, tricked his cavalry into thinking that Marius was on a foraging expedition. So what news Jugurtha got was completely misleading. Thus when Marius appeared with his army before Capsa, the King thought him still a hundred miles away; no one had reported to Jugurtha that the Romans had stocked up on water and grain in order to cross the arid wastelands between the Bagradas River and Capsa. When the ostensibly impregnable fortress found itself looking down on a sea of Roman helmets, its inhabitants surrendered it without a fight. But once again Jugurtha managed to escape. Time to teach Numidia and especially the Gaetuli a lesson, decided Gaius Marius. So in spite of the fact that Capsa had offered him no resistance, he gave his soldiers permission to loot it, rape it, and burn it; every adult, male and female, was put to the sword. Its treasures, and Jugurtha's huge hoard of money, were loaded into wagons; Marius then brought his army safely out of Numidia into winter quarters near Utica, well before the rains began. His Head Count troops had earned their rest. And it gave him intense pleasure to write a dulcet letter to the Senate (to be read out by Gaius Julius Caesar) lauding the spirit, courage, and morale of his Head Count army; nor could he resist adding that after the appallingly bad generalship of Lucius Cassius Longinus, his senior colleague in the consulship, it was certain Rome would need more armies made up of the capite censi. Said Publius Rutilius Rufus in a letter to Gaius Marius toward the end of the year:
Oh, so many red faces! Your father-in-law roared your message out in impressively stentorian tones, so that even those who covered their ears were still obliged to listen. Metellus Piggle-wiggle also known as Metellus Numidicus these days looked murderous. As well he might his old army dead along the Garumna, and your raggle-taggle crew heroes of the living kind. "There is no justice!" he was heard to say afterward, whereupon I turned round and said, very sweetly, "That is true, Quintus Caecilius. For if justice did exist, you wouldn't be calling yourself Numidicus!" He was not amused, but Scaurus fell about laughing, of course. Say what you will about Scaurus, he has the keenest sense of humor, not to mention sense of the ridiculous, of any man I know. Since this is not something I can say of any of his cronies, I sometimes wonder if he doesn't choose his cronies so he can laugh at their posturing in secret. What amazes me, Gaius Marius, is the strength of your fortunate star. I know you weren't worried, but I can tell you now that I didn't think you stood a chance of having your command in Africa prorogued for next year. Then what happens? Lucius Cassius gets himself killed, along with Rome's biggest and most experienced army, leaving the Senate and its controlling faction helpless to oppose you. Your tribune of the plebs, Mancinus, went to the Assembly of the Plebs and procured you a plebiscite extending your governorship of Africa Province without any trouble at all. The Senate lay silent, it being too apparent, even to them, that you are going to be needed. For Rome is a very uneasy place these days. The threat of the Germans hangs over it like a pall of doom, and there are many who say no man is going to arise capable of averting that doom. Where are the Scipio Africanuses, the Aemilius Paulluses, the Scipio Aemilianuses? they ask. But you have a loyal band of devoted followers, Gaius Marius, and since the death of Cassius they are saying, louder and louder, that you are that man who will arise and turn back the German tide. Among them is the accused legate from Burdigala, Gaius Popillius Laenas. Since you are a backward Italian hayseed with no Greek, I shall tell you a little story. Once upon a time, there was a very bad and nasty King of Syria named Antiochus. Now because he was not the first King of Syria to be named Antiochus, nor the greatest (his father claimed the distinction of calling himself Antiochus the Great), he had a number after his name. He was Antiochus IV, the fourth King Antiochus of Syria. Even though Syria was a rich kingdom, King Antiochus IV lusted after the neighboring kingdom of Egypt, where his cousins Ptolemy Philometor, Ptolemy Euergetes Gross Belly, and Cleopatra (being the second Cleopatra, she had a number after her name also, and was known as Cleopatra II) ruled together. I wish I could say they ruled in happy harmony, but they did not. Brothers and sister, husband and wife (yes, in Oriental kingdoms incest is quite permissible), they had been fighting between themselves for years, and had almost succeeded in ruining the fair and fertile land of the great river Nilus. So when King Antiochus IV of Syria decided to conquer Egypt, he thought he would have a very easy time of it thanks to the squabbles of his cousins the two Ptolemies and Cleopatra II. But, alas, the minute he turned his back on Syria, a few unpleasantly seditious incidents compelled him to turn around and go home again to chop off a few heads, dismember a few bodies, pull a few teeth, and probably tear out someone's womb. And it was four years before sufficient heads, arms, legs, teeth, and wombs were plucked from their owners, and King Antiochus IV could start out a second time to conquer Egypt. This time, Syria in his absence remained very quiet and obedient, so King Antiochus IV invaded Egypt, captured Pelusium, marched down the Delta to Memphis, captured that, and began to march up the other side of the Delta toward Alexandria. Having ruined the country and the army, the brothers Ptolemy and their sister-wife, Cleopatra II, had no choice but to appeal to Rome for help against King Antiochus IV, Rome being the best and greatest of all nations, and everyone's hero. To the rescue of Egypt, the Senate and People of Rome (being in better accord in those days than we would believe possible now or so the storybooks say) sent their noble brave consular Gaius Popillius Laenas. Now any other country would have given its hero a whole army, but the Senate and People of Rome gave Gaius Popillius Laenas only twelve lictors and two clerks. However, because it was a foreign mission, the lictors were allowed to wear the red tunics and put the axes in their bundles of rods, so Gaius Popillius Laenas was not quite unprotected. Off they sailed in a little ship, and came to Alexandria just as King Antiochus IV was marching up the Canopic arm of the Nilus toward the great city wherein cowered the Egyptians. Clad in his purple-bordered toga and preceded by his twelve crimson-clad lictors, all bearing the axes in their bundles of rods, Gaius Popillius Laenas walked out of Alexandria through the Sun Gate, and kept on walking east. Now he was not a young man, so as he went he leaned upon a tall staff, his pace as placid as his face. Since only the brave and heroic and noble Romans built decent roads, he was soon walking along through thick dust. But was Gaius Popillius Laenas deterred? No! He just kept on walking, until near the huge hippodrome in which the Alexandrians liked to watch the horse races, he ran into a wall of Syrian soldiers, and had to stop. King Antiochus IV of Syria came forward, and went to meet Gaius Popillius Laenas. "Rome has no business in Egypt!" the King said, frowning awfully and direfully. "Syria has no business in Egypt either," said Gaius Popillius Laenas, smiling sweetly and serenely. "Go back to Rome," said the King. "Go back to Syria," said Gaius Popillius Laenas. But neither of them moved a single inch. "You are offending the Senate and People of Rome," said Gaius Popillius Laenas after a while of staring into the King's fierce face. "I have been ordered to make you return to Syria." The King laughed and laughed and laughed. "And how are you going to make me go home?" he asked. "Where is your army?" "I have no need of an army, King Antiochus IV," said Gaius Popillius Laenas. "Everything that Rome is, has been, and will be, is standing before you here and now. I am Rome, no less than Rome's largest army. And in the name of Rome, I say to you a further time, go home!" "No," said King Antiochus IV. So Gaius Popillius Laenas stepped forward, and moving sedately, he used the end of his staff to trace a circle in the dust all the way around the person of King Antiochus IV, who found himself standing inside Gaius Popillius Laenas's circle. "Before you step out of this circle, King Antiochus IV, I advise you to think again," said Gaius Popillius Laenas. "And when you do step out of it why, be facing east, and go home to Syria." The King said nothing. The King did not stir. Gaius Popillius Laenas said nothing. Gaius Popillius Laenas did not stir. Since Gaius Popillius Laenas was a Roman and did not need to hide his face, his sweet and serene countenance was on full display. But King Antiochus IV hid his face behind a curled and wired wig-beard, and even then could not conceal its thunder. Time went on. And then, still inside the circle, the mighty King of Syria turned on his heel to face east, and stepped out of the circle in an easterly direction, and marched back to Syria with all his soldiers. Now on his way to Egypt, King Antiochus IV had invaded and conquered the isle of Cyprus, which belonged to Egypt. Egypt needed Cyprus, because Cyprus gave it timber for ships and buildings, and grain, and copper. So after he left the cheering Egyptians in Alexandria, Gaius Popillius Laenas sailed to Cyprus, where he found a Syrian army of occupation. "Go home," he said to it. And home it went. Gaius Popillius Laenas went home himself to Rome, where he said, very sweetly and serenely and simply, that he had sent King Antiochus IV home to Syria, and saved Egypt and Cyprus from a cruel fate. I wish I could end my little story by assuring you that the Ptolemies and their sister, Cleopatra II, lived and ruled happily ever after, but they didn't. They just went on fighting among themselves, and murdering a few close relatives, and ruining the country. What in the name of all the gods, I can hear you asking, am I telling children's stories for? Simple, my dear Gaius Marius. How many times at your mother's knee did you get told the story of Gaius Popillius Laenas and the circle around the King of Syria's feet? Well, maybe in Arpinum mothers don't tell that one. But in Rome, it's standard issue. From highest to lowest, every Roman child gets told the story of Gaius Popillius Laenas and the circle around the feet of the King of Syria. So how, I ask you, could the great-grandson of the hero of Alexandria proceed into exile without risking his all by standing trial? To proceed into exile voluntarily is to admit guilt and I for one consider that our Gaius Popillius Laenas did the sensible thing at Burdigala. The upshot of it was that our Popillius Laenas remained and stood trial. The tribune of the plebs Gaius Coelius Caldus (acting on behalf of a senatorial clique which shall be nameless but you are allowed to guess a clique determined to transfer the blame for Burdigala elsewhere than on Lucius Cassius's shoulders, naturally) vowed that he would see Laenas condemned. However, since the only special treason court we have is limited to those dealing with Jugurtha, the trial had to take place in the Centuriate Assembly. Glaringly public, what with each Century's spokesman shouting out his Century's verdict for all the world to hear. "CONDEMNO!" "ABSOLVO!" Who, after hearing the story of Gaius Popillius Laenas and the circle around the King of Syria's feet at his mother's knee, would dare to shout, "CONDEMNO!"? But did that stop Caldus? Certainly not. He introduced a bill in the Plebeian Assembly which extended the secret ballot of elections to cover treason trials as well. That way, the Centuries called upon to vote could be sure that each man's opinion wasn't known. The bill passed; all seemed in good train. And as the month of December started, Gaius Popillius Laenas was tried in the Centuriate Assembly on a charge of treason. The ballot was a secret one, just as Caldus wanted. But all a few of us did was slip among the gargantuan jury, and whisper, "Once upon a time there was a noble, brave consular named Gaius Popillius Laenas ... " and that was the end of it. When they counted the votes, they all said, "ABSOLVO." So, you might say, if justice was done, it was entirely thanks to the nursery.
THE FIFTH YEAR (106 B.C.): IN THE CONSULSHIP OF QUINTUS SERVILIUS CAEPIO AND GAIUS ATILIUS SERRANUS
When Quintus Servilius Caepio was given a mandate to march against the Volcae Tectosages of Gaul and their German guests now happily resettled near Tolosa he was fully aware he was going to get that mandate. It happened on the first day of the New Year, during the meeting of the Senate in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus after the inauguration ceremony. And Quintus Servilius Caepio, making his maiden speech as the new senior consul, announced to the packed assemblage that he would not avail himself of the new kind of Roman army. "I shall use Rome's traditional soldiers, not the paupers of the Head Count," he said, amid cheers and wild applause. Of course there were senators present who did not cheer; Gaius Marius did not exist alone amid a totally inimical Senate. A good number of the backbenchers were sufficiently enlightened to see the logic behind Marius's stand against entrenched opinion, and even among the Famous Families there were some independent-thinking men. But the clique of conservatives who sat in the front row of the House around the person of Scaurus Princeps Senatus were the men who dictated senatorial policy; when they cheered, the House cheered, and when they voted a certain way, the House voted a similar way. To this clique did Quintus Servilius Caepio belong, and it was the active lobbying of this clique that prodded the Conscript Fathers to authorize an army eight full legions strong for the use of Quintus Servilius Caepio in teaching the Germans that they were not welcome in the lands of the Middle Sea, and the Volcae Tectosages of Tolosa that it did not pay to welcome Germans. About four thousand of Lucius Cassius's troops had come back fit to serve, but all save a few of the noncombatants in Cassius's army had perished along with the actual troops, and the cavalry who survived had scattered to their homelands, taking their horses and their noncombatants with them. Thus Quintus Servilius Caepio was faced with the task of finding 41,000 infantrymen, plus 12,000 free non-combatants, plus 8,000 slave noncombatants, plus 5,000 cavalry troopers and 5,000 noncombatant cavalry servants. All this in an Italy denuded of men with the property qualifications, be they Roman, Latin, or Italian in origin. Caepio's recruitment techniques were appalling. Not that he himself participated in them, or even bothered to acquaint himself with how the men were going to be found; he paid a staff and set his quaestor in charge, while he himself turned his hand to other things, things more worthy of a consul. The levies were enforced ruthlessly. Men were pressed into service not only without their consent, but as victims of kidnap, and veterans were hauled willy-nilly from their homes. A mature-looking fourteen-year-old son of a pressed smallholding farmer was also pressed, as was his youthful-looking sixty-year-old grandfather. And if such a family could not produce the money to arm and equip its pressed' members, someone was on hand to write down the price of the gear, and take the smallholding as payment; Quintus Servilius Caepio and his backers acquired a large amount of land. When, even so, neither Roman nor Latin citizens could provide anything like enough men, the Italian Allies were hounded remorselessly. But in the end Caepio got his forty-one thousand infantrymen and his twelve thousand noncombatant freemen the traditional way, which meant that the State didn't have to pay for their arms, armor, or equipment; and the preponderance of Italian Allied auxiliary legions put the financial burdens of upkeep upon the Italian Allied nations rather than Rome. As a result, the Senate offered Caepio a vote of thanks, and was delighted to open its purse wide enough to hire horse troopers from Thrace and the two Gauls. While Caepio looked even more self-important than usual, Rome's conservative elements spoke of him in laudatory terms wherever and whenever they could find ears to listen. The other things to which Caepio personally attended while his press-gangs roamed throughout the Italian peninsula were all to do with returning power to the Senate; one way or another, the Senate had been suffering since the time of Tiberius Gracchus, almost thirty years before. First Tiberius Gracchus, then Fulvius Flaccus, then Gaius Gracchus, and after them a mixture of New Men and reforming noblemen had steadily whittled away at senatorial participation in the major law courts and the making of laws. If it hadn't been for Gaius Marius's recent assaults upon senatorial privilege, possibly Caepio would have been less imbued with zeal to put the state of affairs right, and less determined. But Marius had stirred up the senatorial hornets' nest, and the result during the first weeks of Caepio's consulship was a dismaying setback for the Plebs and the knights who controlled the Plebs. A patrician, Caepio summoned the Assembly of the People, from which he was not disbarred, and forced through a bill that removed the extortion court from the knights, who had received it from Gaius Gracchus; once more the juries in the extortion court were to be filled solely from the Senate, which could confidently be expected to protect its own. It was a bitter battle in the Assembly of the People, with the handsome Gaius Memmius leading a strong group of senators opposed to Caepio's act. But Caepio won. And, having won, in late March the senior consul led eight legions and a big force of cavalry in the direction of Tolosa, his mind filled with dreams, not so much of glory as of a more private form of self-gratification. For Quintus Servilius Caepio was a true Servilius Caepio, which meant that the opportunity to increase his fortune from a term as governor was more alluring by far than mere military fortune. He had been a praetor-governor in Further Spain, when Scipio Nasica had declined the job on the grounds that he was not to be trusted, and he had done very well for himself. Now that he was a consul-governor, he expected to do even better. If it was routinely possible to send troops from Italy to Spain by water, then Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus would not have needed to open up the land route along the coast of Gaul-across-the-Alps; as it was, the prevailing winds and sea currents made water transportation too risky. So Caepio's legions, like Lucius Cassius's the year before, were obliged to walk the thousand-plus miles from Campania to Narbo. Not that the legions minded the walk; every last one of them hated and feared the sea, and dreaded the thought of a hundred miles of sailing far more than the reality of a thousand miles of walking. For one thing, their muscles were laid on from infancy in the right way to facilitate swift and endless walking, and walking was the most comfortable form of locomotion. The journey from Campania to Narbo took Caepio's legions a little over seventy days, which meant they averaged less than fifteen miles a day a slow pace, hampered as they were not only by a large baggage train, but by the many private animals and vehicles and slaves the old-style propertied Roman soldier knew himself entitled to carry with him to ensure his own comfort. In Narbo, a little seaport Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus had reorganized to serve the needs of Rome, the army rested just long enough to recover from its march, yet not long enough to soften up again. In early summer Narbo was a delightful place, its pellucid waters alive with shrimp, little lobsters, big crabs, and swimmy fish of all kinds. And in the mud at the bottom of the saltwater pools around the mouths of the Atax and the Ruscino were not only oysters, but dug-mullets. Of all the fish the legions of Rome had catalogued worldwide, dug-mullets were considered the most delicious. Round and flat like plates, with both eyes on one side of their silly thin heads, they lurked under the mud, had to be dug out, and then were speared as they floundered about trying to dig themselves back into the mud. The legionary didn't get sore feet. He was too used to walking, and his thick-soled, ankle-supporting sandals had hobnails to raise him still further off the ground, absorb some of the shock, and keep pebbles out. However, it was wonderful to swim in the sea around Narbo, easing aching muscles, and those few soldiers who had managed to escape so far being taught to swim were here discovered, and the omission rectified. The local girls were no different from girls all over the world crazy for men in uniform and for the space of sixteen days Narbo hummed with irate fathers, vengeful brothers, giggling girls, lecherous legionaries, and tavern brawls, keeping the provost marshals busy and the military tribunes in a foul temper. Then Caepio packed his men up and moved them out along the excellent road Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus had built between the coast and the city of Tolosa. Where the river Atax bent at right angles as it flowed from the Pyrenees away to the south, the grim fortress of Carcasso frowned from its heights; from this point the legions marched over the hills dividing the headwaters of the huge Garumna River from the short streams emptying into the Middle Sea, and so came down at last to the lush alluvial plains of Tolosa. Caepio's luck was amazing, as usual; for the Germans had quarreled bitterly with their hosts, the Volcae Tectosages, and been ordered by King Copillus of Tolosa to leave the area. Thus Caepio found that the only enemies his eight legions had to deal with were the hapless Volcae Tectosages, who took one look at the steel-shirted ranks coming down from the hills like an endless snake, and decided discretion was by far the better part of valor. King Copillus and his warriors departed for the mouth of the Garumna, there to alert the various tribes of the region and wait to see if Caepio was as foolish a general as Lucius Cassius had been last year. Left in the care of old men, Tolosa itself surrendered at once. Caepio purred. Why did he purr? Because Caepio knew about the Gold of Tolosa. And now he would find it without even having to fight a battle. Lucky Quintus Servilius Caepio!
A hundred and seventy years before, the Volcae Tectosages had joined a migration of the Gauls led by the second of the two famous Celtic kings called Brennus. This second Brennus had overrun Macedonia, poured down into Thessaly, turned the Greek defense at the pass of Thermopylae, and penetrated into central Greece and Epirus. He had sacked and looted the three richest temples in the world Dodona in Epirus, Olympian Zeus, and the great sanctuary of Apollo and the Pythoness at Delphi. Then the Greeks fought back, the Gauls retreated north with their plunder, Brennus died as the result of a wound, and his master plan fell apart. In Macedonia his leaderless tribes decided to cross the Hellespont into Asia Minor; there they founded the Gallic outpost nation called Galatia. But perhaps half of the Volcae Tectosages wanted to go home to Tolosa rather than cross the Hellespont; at a grand council, all the tribes agreed that these homesick Volcae Tectosages should be entrusted with the riches of half a hundred pillaged temples, including the riches of Dodona, Olympia, and Delphi. It was just that, a trust. The homebound Volcae Tectosages would hold the wealth of that whole migration in Tolosa against the day when all the tribes would return to Gaul, and claim it. They melted everything down, to make their journey home easier: bulky solid-gold statues, silver urns five feet tall, cups and plates and goblets, golden tripods, wreaths made of gold or silver into the crucibles they went, a small piece at a time, until a thousand laden wagons rolled westward through the quiet alpine valleys of the river Danubius, and came at last after several years down to the Garumna and Tolosa.
Caepio had heard the story while he had been governor of Further Spain three years before, and had dreamed ever since of finding the Gold of Tolosa, even though his Spanish informant had assured him the treasure trove was commonly regarded as a myth. There was no gold in Tolosa, every visitor to the city of the Volcae Tectosages swore to that fact; the Volcae Tectosages had no more wealth than their bountiful river and wonderful soil. But Caepio knew his luck. He knew the gold was there in Tolosa. Otherwise, why had he heard the story in Spain, and then got this commission to follow in the footsteps of Lucius Cassius to Tolosa and found the Germans gone when he got there, the city his without a fight? Fortune was working her will, all in his cause. He shed his military gear, put on his purple-bordered toga, and walked the rather rustic alleys of the town, poked through every nook and niche inside the citadel, wandered into the pastures and fields which encroached upon the outskirts in a manner more Spanish than Gallic. Indeed, Tolosa had little Gallic feel to it no Druids, no typical Gallic dislike for an urban environment. The temples and temple precincts were laid out in the fashion of Spanish cities, a picturesque parkland of artificial lakes and rivulets, fed from and going back to the Garumna. Lovely! Having found nothing on his walks, Caepio put his army to looking for the gold, a treasure hunt in a gala atmosphere conducted by troops who were released from the anxiety of facing an enemy, and who smelled a share in fabulous booty. But the gold couldn't be found. Oh, the temples yielded a few priceless artifacts, but only a few, and no bullion. And the citadel was a complete disappointment, as Caepio had already seen for himself; nothing but weapons and wooden gods, horn vessels and plates of fired clay. King Copillus had lived with extreme simplicity, nor were there secret storage vaults under the plain flags of his halls. Then Caepio had a bright idea, and set his soldiers to digging up the parks around the temples. In vain. Not one hole, even the deepest, revealed a sign of a gold brick. The gold diviners brandished their forked withies without finding one tiny signal to set the palms of their hands tingling or the withies bending like bows. From the temple precincts, the search spread into the fields and into the streets of the town, and still nothing. While the landscape came more and more to resemble the demented burrowing of a gigantic mole, Caepio walked and thought, thought and walked. The Garumna was alive with fish, including freshwater salmon and several varieties of carp, and since the river fed the temple lakes, they too teemed with fish. It was more comfortable for Caepio's legionaries to catch fish in the lakes than in the river, wide and deep and swift flowing, so as he walked, he was surrounded by soldiers tying flies and making rods out of willow canes. Down to the biggest lake he walked, deep in thought. And as he stood there, he absently watched the play of light on the scales of lurking fish, glitters-and gleams flickering in and out of the weeds, coming and going, ever changing. Most of the flashes were silver, but now and then an exotic carp would slide into view, and he would catch a gleam of gold. The idea invaded his conscious mind slowly. And then it struck, it exploded inside his brain. He sent for his corps of engineers and told them to drain the lakes not a difficult job, and one which certainly paid off. For the Gold of Tolosa lay at the bottom of these sacred pools, hidden by mud, weeds, the natural detritus of many decades. When the last bar was rinsed off and stacked, Caepio came to survey the hoard, and gaped; that he had not watched as the gold was retrieved was a quirk of his peculiar nature, for he wanted to be surprised. He was surprised! In fact, he was flabbergasted. There were roughly 50,000 bars of gold, each weighing about 15 pounds; 15,000 talents altogether. And there were 10,000 bars of silver, each weighing 20 pounds; 3,500 talents of silver altogether. Then the sappers found other silver in the lakes, for it turned out that the only use the Volcae Tectosages had made of their riches was to craft their millstones out of solid silver; once a month they hauled these silver millstones from the river and used them to grind a month's supply of flour. "All right," said Caepio briskly, "how many wagons can we spare to transport the treasure to Narbo?" He directed his question at Marcus Furius, his praefectus fabrum, the man who organized supply lines, baggage trains, equipment, accoutrements, fodder, and all the other necessities entailed in maintaining an army in the field. "Well, Quintus Servilius, there are a thousand wagons in the baggage train, about a third of which are empty at this stage. Say three hundred and fifty if I do a bit of shuffling around. Now if each wagon carries about thirty-five talents which is a good but not excessive load then we'll need about three hundred and fifty wagons for the silver, and four hundred and fifty wagons for the gold," said Marcus Furius, who was not a member of the ancient Famous Family Furius, but the great-grandson of a Furian slave, and now was a client of Caepio's, as well as a banker. "Then I suggest that we ship the silver first, in three hundred and fifty wagons, unload it in Narbo, and bring the wagons back to Tolosa to transport the gold," said Caepio. "In the meantime, I'll have the troops unload an extra hundred wagons, so that we have sufficient to send the gold off in one convoy." By the end of Quinctilis, the silver had made its way to the coast and been unloaded, and the empty wagons sent back to Tolosa for the gold; Caepio, as good as his word, had found the extra hundred wagons during the interval. While the gold was loaded, Caepio wandered around deliriously from one stack of rich bricks to another, unable to resist stroking one or two in passing. He chewed the side of his hand, thinking hard, and finally sighed. "You had better go with the gold, Marcus Furius," he said then. "Someone very senior will have to stay with it in Narbo until every last brick is safely loaded on board the last ship.'' He turned to his Greek freedman Bias. "The silver is already on its way to Rome, I trust?" "No, Quintus Servilius," said Bias smoothly. "The transports which brought heavy goods across on the winter winds at the beginning of the year have dispersed. I could only locate a dozen good vessels, and I thought it wiser to save them for the gold. The silver is under heavy guard in a warehouse and is quite safe. The sooner we ship the gold to Rome, the better, I think. As more decent ships come in, I'll hire them for the silver." "Oh, we can probably send the silver to Rome by road," Caepio said easily. "Even with the risk of a ship's foundering, Quintus Servilius, I would rather trust to the sea for every single brick, gold and silver," said Marcus Furius. "There are too many hazards by road from raiding alpine tribes." "Yes, you're quite right," agreed Caepio, and sighed. "Oh, it's almost too good to be true, isn't it? We are sending more gold and silver to Rome than there is in every one of Rome's treasuries!" "Indeed, Quintus Servilius," said Marcus Furius, "it is remarkable."
The gold set out from Tolosa in its 450 wagons midway through Sextilis. It was escorted by a single cohort of legionaries, for the Roman road was a civilized one passing through civilized country that had not seen a hand lifted in anger in a very long time, and Caepio's agents had reported that King Copillus and his warriors were still within Burdigala, hoping to see Caepio venture down the same road Lucius Cassius had taken to his death. Once Carcasso was reached, the road was literally downhill all the way to the sea, and the pace of the wagon train increased. Everyone was pleased, no one worried; the cohort of soldiers began to fancy that they could smell the salt of the shore. By nightfall, they knew, they would be clattering into the streets of Narbo; their minds were on oysters, dug-mullets, and Narbonese girls. The raiding party, over a thousand strong, came whooping out of the south from the midst of a great forest bordering the road on either side, spilling in front of the first wagon and behind the last wagon some two miles further back, where the halves of the cohort were distributed. Within a very short space of time not a single Roman soldier was left alive, and the wagon drivers too lay in jumbled heaps of arms and legs. The moon was full, the night fine; during the hours when the wagon train had waited for darkness, no one had come along the Roman road from either direction, for provincial Roman roads were really for the movement of armies, and trade in this part of the Roman Province was scant between coast and interior, especially since the Germans had come to settle around Tolosa. As soon as the moon was well up, the mules were again harnessed to the wagons and some of the raiders climbed up to drive, while others walked alongside as guides. For when the forest ceased to march alongside the road, the wagon train turned off it onto a stretch of hard coastal ground suited only to the nibbling mouths of sheep. By dawn Ruscino and its river lay to the north; the wagon train resumed tenure of the Via Domitia and crossed the pass of the Pyrenees in broad daylight. South of the Pyrenees its route was circuitous and not within sight of any Roman road until the wagon train crossed the Sucro River to the west of the town of Saetabis; from there it headed straight across the Rush Plain, a desolate and barren stretch of country which dived between two of the greatest of the chains of Spanish mountains, yet was not used as a short cut because of its waterlessness. After which the trail petered out, and further progress of the Gold of Tolosa was never ascertained by Caepio's investigators.
It was the misfortune of a dispatch rider carrying a message from Narbo to find the tumbled heaps of looted corpses alongside the road through the forest just to the east of Carcasso. And when the dispatch rider reported to Quintus Servilius Caepio in Tolosa, Quintus Servilius Caepio broke down and wept. He wept loudly for the fate of Marcus Furius, he wept loudly for the fate of that cohort of Roman soldiers, he wept loudly for wives and families left orphaned in Italy; but most of all he wept loudly for those glittering heaps of ruddy bricks, the loss of the Gold of Tolosa. It wasn't fair! What had happened to his luck? he cried. And wept loudly. Clad in a dark toga of mourning, his tunic dark and devoid of any stripe on its right shoulder, Caepio wept again when he called his army to an assembly, and told them the news they had already learned through the camp grapevine. "But at least we still have the silver," he said, wiping his eyes. "It alone will ensure a decent profit for every man at the end of the campaign." "I'm thankful for small mercies, myself," said one veteran ranker to his tentmate and messmate; they had both been pressed off their farms in Umbria, though each had already served in ten campaigns over a period of fifteen years. "You are?" asked his companion, somewhat slower in his thought processes, due to an old head wound from a Scordisci shield boss. "Too right I am! Have you ever known a general to share gold with us scum-of-the-earth soldiers? Somehow he always finds a reason why he's the only one gets it. Oh, and the Treasury gets some, that's how he manages to hang on to most of it, he buys the Treasury off. At least we're going to get a share of the silver, and there was enough silver to make a mountain of. What with all the fuss about the gold going missing, the consul don't have much choice except to be fair about dishing out the silver." ''I see what you mean,'' said his companion. ''Let' s catch a nice fat salmon for our supper, eh?" Indeed, the year was wearing down and Caepio's army had not had to do any fighting at all, save for that one unlucky cohort deputed to guard the Gold of Tolosa. Caepio wrote off to Rome with the whole story from the decamped Germans to the lost gold, asking for instructions. By October he had his answer, which was much as he had expected: he was to remain in the neighborhood of Narbo with his entire army, winter there, and wait for fresh orders in the spring. Which meant that his command had been extended for a year; he was still the governor of Roman Gaul. But it wasn't the same without the gold. Caepio fretted and moped, and often wept, and it was noted by his senior officers that he found it difficult to settle, kept on walking back and forth. Typical of Quintus Servilius Caepio, was the general feeling; no one really believed that the tears he shed were for Marcus Furius, or the dead soldiers. Caepio wept for his lost gold.
2
One of the main characteristics of a long campaign in a foreign land is the way the army and its chain of command settle into a life-style which regards the foreign land as at least a semipermanent home. Despite the constant movements, the campaigns, the forays, the expeditions, base camp takes on all the aspects of a town: most of the soldiers find women, many of the women produce babies, shops and taverns and traders multiply outside the heavily fortified walls, and mud-brick houses for the women and babies mushroom through a haphazard system of narrow streets. Such was the situation in the Roman base camp outside Utica, and to a lesser extent the same thing occurred in the base camp outside Cirta. Since Marius chose his centurions and military tribunes very carefully, the period of the winter rains which saw no fighting was used not only for drills and exercises, but for sorting out the troops into congenial octets expected to tent and mess together, and dealing with the thousand and one disciplinary problems which naturally occur among so many men cooped up together for long stretches of time. However, the arrival of the African spring warm, lush, fruitful, and dry always saw a great stirring within the camp, a little like the rolling shiver which starts at one end of a horse's skin and proceeds all the way to the other end. Kits were sorted out for the coming campaigns, wills made and lodged with the legion's clerks, mail shirts oiled and polished, swords sharpened, daggers honed, helmets padded with felt to withstand heat and chafing, sandals carefully inspected and missing hobnails attended to, tunics mended, imperfect or worn-out gear shown to the centurion and then turned in to the army stores for replacement. Winter saw the arrival of a Treasury quaestor from Rome bearing pay for the legions, and a spate of activity among the clerks as they compiled their accounts and paid the men. Because his soldiers were insolvent, Marius had instituted two compulsory funds into which some of every man's pay was channeled a fund for burial in respectable fashion for the legionary who died while away but not actually in battle (if he died in battle, the State paid for his burial), and a savings bank which would not release the legionary's money until he was discharged. The army of Africa knew great things were planned for it in the spring of the year of Caepio's consulship, though only the very highest levels of command knew what. Orders went out for light marching order, which meant there would be no miles-long baggage train of ox-drawn wagons, only mule-drawn wagons able to keep up with and camp within each night's camp. Each soldier was now obliged to carry his gear on his back, which he did very cleverly, slung from a stout Y-shaped rod he bore on his left shoulder shaving kit, spare tunics, socks, cold-weather breeches, and thick neckerchiefs to avoid chafing where the mail shirt rubbed against the neck, all rolled inside his blanket and encased in a hide cover; sagum his wet-weather circular cape in a leather bag; mess kit and cooking pot, water bag, a minimum of three days' rations; one precut, notched stake for the camp palisade, whichever entrenching tool he had been allocated, hide bucket, wicker basket, saw, and sickle; and cleaning compounds for the care of his arms and armor. His shield, encased in a supple kidskin protective cover, he slung across his back beneath his gear, and his helmet, its long dyed horsehair plume removed and stowed away carefully, he either added to the clutter depending from his carrying pole, or slung high on his right chest, or wore on his head if he marched in expectation of attack. He always donned his mail shirt for the march, its twenty-pound weight removed from his shoulders because he kilted it tightly around his waist with his belt, thus distributing its load on his hips. On the right side of his belt he fixed his sword in its scabbard, on the left side his dagger in its scabbard, and he wore both on the road. His two spears he did not carry. Each eight men were issued with a mule, on which were piled their leather tent, its poles, and their spears, together with extra rations if no fresh issue was to be made every three days. Eighty legionaries and twenty noncombatants made up each century, officered by the centurion. Every century had one mule cart allocated to it, in which rode all the men's extra gear clothing, tools, spare weapons, wicker breastwork sections for the camp's fortifications, rations if no issues were to be made for very long periods, and more. If the whole army was on the move and didn't expect to double back on its tracks at the end of a campaign, then every single thing it owned from plunder to artillery was carried in oxcarts which plodded miles to the rear under heavy guard. When Marius set out for western Numidia in the spring, he left this heavy baggage behind in Utica, of course; it was nonetheless an imposing parade, seeming to stretch inimitably, for each legion and its mule carts and artillery took up a mile of road, and Marius led six legions west, plus his cavalry. The cavalry, however, he disposed on either side of the infantry, which kept the total length of his column to about six miles. In open country there was no possibility of ambush, an enemy could not string himself out enough to attack all parts of the column simultaneously without being seen, and any attack on a part of the column would immediately have resulted in the rest of the column's turning in on the attackers and surrounding them, the act of wheeling bringing them into battle rank and file automatically. And yet, every night the order was the same make a camp. Which meant measuring and marking an area large enough to hold every man and animal in the army, digging deep ditches, fixing the sharpened stakes called stimuli in their bottoms, raising earthworks and palisades; but at the end of it, every man save the sentries could sleep like the dead, secure in the knowledge that no enemy could get inside quickly enough to take the camp by surprise. It was the men of this army, the first composed entirely of the Head Count, who christened themselves "Marius's mules" because Marius had loaded them like mules. In an old-style army composed of propertied men, even ranker soldiers had marched with their effects loaded onto a mule, a donkey, or a slave; those who could not afford the outlay hired carrying space from those who could. In consequence, there was little control over the number of wagons and carts, as many were privately owned. And in consequence, the old-style army marched more slowly and less efficiently than did Marius's African Head Count army and the many similar armies which were to follow in its wake for the next six hundred years. Marius had given the Head Count useful work and a wage for doing it. But he did them few favors otherwise, save to lop the curved top and curved bottom off the old five-foot-tall infantryman's shield, for a man couldn't have carried that on his back beneath his loaded pole; at its new reduced height of three feet, it didn't collide with his burdens, or clip the backs of his ankles as he strode along.
And so they marched into western Numidia six miles long, singing their marching songs at the tops of their voices to keep their pace even and feel the comfort of military camaraderie, moving together, singing together, a single mighty human machine rolling irresistibly along. Midway down the column marched the general Marius with all his staff and the mule carts carrying their gear, singing with the rest; none of the high command rode, for it was uncomfortable as well as conspicuous, though they did have horses close by in case of attack, when the general would need the additional height of horseback to see to his dispositions and send out his staff with orders. "We sack every town and village and hamlet we encounter," Marius said to Sulla. And this program was faithfully carried out, with some additions: granaries and smokehouses were pillaged to augment the food supply, local women were raped because the soldiers were missing their own women, and homosexuality was punishable by death. Most of all, everyone kept his eyes peeled for booty, which was not allowed to be taken as private property, but was contributed to the army's haul. Every eighth day the army rested, and whenever it reached a point where the coastline intersected the march route, Marius gave everyone three days of rest to swim, fish, eat well. By the end of May they were west of Cirta, and by the end of Quinctilis they had reached the river Muluchath, six hundred miles further west again.
It had been an easy campaign; Jugurtha's army never appeared, the settlements were incapable of resisting the Roman advance, and at no time had they run short of either food or water. The inevitable regimen of hardtack bread, pulse porridge, salty bacon, and salty cheese had been varied by enough goat meat, fish, veal, mutton, fruit, and vegetables to keep everyone in good spirits, and the sour wine with which the army was occasionally issued had been augmented with Berber barley beer and some good wine. The river Muluchath formed the border between western Numidia and eastern Mauretania; a roaring torrent in late winter, by midsummer the big stream had dwindled to a string of water holes, and by the late autumn it dried up completely. In the midst of its plain not far from the sea there reared a precipitous volcanic outcrop a thousand feet high, and on top of it Jugurtha had built a fortress. In it, so Marius's spies had informed him, there was a great treasure stored, for it functioned as Jugurtha's western headquarters. The Roman army came down to the plain, marched to the high banks the river had cut itself when in full spate, and built a permanent camp as close to the mountain fortress as possible. Then Marius, Sulla, Sertorius, Aulus Manlius, and the rest of the high command took time to study the impregnable-looking citadel. "We can forget the idea of a frontal assault," Marius said, "and I, for one, can't see any way to besiege it." "That's because there isn't a way to besiege it," said young Sertorius positively; he had made several thorough inspections of the peak from all sides. Sulla lifted his head so that he could see the top of the peak from under the brim of his hat. "I think we're going to sit here at the bottom without ever getting to the top," he said, and grinned. "Even if we built a gigantic wooden horse, we'd never get it up the track to the gates." "Any more than we'd get a siege tower up there," said Aulus Manlius. "Well, we've got about a month before we have to turn east again," said Marius finally. "I suggest we spend that month camped here. We'll make life as palatable for the men as possible Lucius Cornelius, make up your mind where you want to take our drinking water from, then allocate the deeper river pools downstream of that for swimming holes. Aulus Manlius, you can organize fishing parties to go all the way to the sea it's about ten miles, so the scouts say. You and I will ride down to the coast ourselves tomorrow to spy out the land. They're not going to run the risk of coming out of that citadel to attack us, so we may as well let the men enjoy themselves. Quintus Sertorius, you can forage for fruit and vegetables." "You know," said Sulla later on, when he and Marius were alone in the command tent, "this whole campaign has been a holiday. When am I going to be blooded?" "You should have been at Capsa, only the place surrendered," said Marius, and gave his quaestor a searching glance. "Are you becoming bored, Lucius Cornelius?" "Actually, no," said Sulla, frowning. "I wouldn't have believed how interesting this kind of life is -there's always something interesting to do, interesting problems to wrestle. I don't even mind the bookkeeping! It's just that I need to be blooded. Look at you. By the time you were my age, you'd been in half a hundred battles. Whereas look at me a tyro." "You'll be blooded, Lucius Cornelius, and hopefully soon." "Oh?" "Certainly. Why do you think we're here, so far from anywhere important?" "No, don't tell me, let me work it out!" said Sulla quickly. "You're here because .. . because you're hoping to give King Bocchus a big enough fright to ally himself with Jugurtha... because if Bocchus does ally himself with Jugurtha, Jugurtha will feel strong enough to attack." "Very good!" said Marius, smiling. "This land is so vast we could spend the next ten years marching up and down it, and never so much as smell Jugurtha on the wind. If he didn't have the Gaetuli, smashing the settled areas would smash his ability to resist, but he does have the Gaetuli. However, he's too proud to like the idea of a Roman army on the loose among his towns and villages, and there's no doubt he must be feeling the pinch of our raids, particularly in his grain supply. Yet he's too crafty to risk a pitched battle while I'm in command. Unless we can push Bocchus to his aid. The Moors can field at least twenty thousand good troops, and five thousand excellent cavalry. So if Bocchus does join him, Jugurtha will move against us, nothing surer.'' "Don't you worry that with Bocchus, he'll outnumber us?" "No! Six Roman legions properly trained and properly led can contend with any enemy force, no matter how large." "But Jugurtha learned his warfare with Scipio Aemilianus at Numantia," said Sulla. "He'll fight the Roman way." "There are other foreign kings who fight the Roman way," said Marius, "but their troops aren't Roman. Our methods were evolved to suit the minds and temperaments of our people, and I make no distinction in this regard between Roman and Latin and Italian." "Discipline," said Sulla. "And organization," said Marius. "Neither of which is going to get us to the top of that mountain out there," said Sulla. Marius laughed. "True! But there's always one intangible, Lucius Cornelius." "What's that?" "Luck," said Marius. "Never forget luck." They had become good friends, Sulla and Marius, for though there were differences between them, there were also basic similarities: neither man was an orthodox thinker, both men were unusual, adversity had honed each of them finely, and each was capable of great detachment as well as great passion. Most important similarity of all, both men liked to get on with the job, and liked to excel at it. The aspects of their natures which might have driven them apart were dormant during those early years, when the younger man could not hope to rival the older in any way, and the younger man's streak of cold-bloodedness did not need to be exercised, any more than did the older man's streak of iconoclasm. "There are those who maintain," said Sulla, stretching his arms above his head, "that a man makes his own luck." Marius opened his eyes wide, an action which sent his eyebrows flying upward. "But of course! Still, isn't it nice to know one has it?"
Publius Vagiennius, who hailed from back-country Liguria and was serving in an auxiliary squadron of cavalry, found himself with a great deal more to do than he liked to do after Gaius Marius established camp along the banks of the river Muluchath. Luckily the plain was covered with a long, dense growth of native grass turned silver by the summer sun, so that grazing for the army's several thousand mules was not a problem. However, horses were fussier eaters than mules, and nudged half-heartedly at this hard strappy ground cover with the result that the cavalry's horses had to be moved to the north of the citadel mountain in the midst of the plain, to a place where underground soaks had stimulated the growth of more tender grasses. If the commander were other than Gaius Marius, thought Publius Vagiennius resentfully the whole of the cavalry might have been permitted to camp separately, in close proximity to decent grazing for their horses. But no. Gaius Marius wanted no temptations offered the dwellers in the Muluchath citadel, and had issued orders that every last man had to camp within the main compound. So every day the scouts had first to ascertain that no Enemy lurked in the vicinity; then the cavalry troopers were allowed to lead their horses out to graze, and every evening were obliged to lead their horses back again to the camp. This meant every horse had to be hobbled to graze, otherwise catching it would have been impossible. Every morning therefore Publius Vagiennius had to ride one of his two mounts and lead the other across the plain from the camp to the good grass, hobble them for a good day's browsing, and plod the five miles back to the camp, where (it seemed to him, at any rate) his hours of leisure had just begun when it was time to plod out to pick up his horses again. Added to which, not a cavalry trooper born liked walking. However, there was nothing to say a man had to walk back to camp after turning his animals out to graze; therefore Publius Vagiennius made some adjustments to his schedule. Since he rode bareback and without a bridle only a fool would leave his precious saddle and bridle parked in open country for the day he got into the habit of slinging a water bag over his shoulder and a lunch pouch on his belt when starting out from the camp. Then, having liberated his two animals close to the base of the citadel mountain, he would retire to a shady spot to while away his day. On his fourth trip, he settled comfortably with water bag and lunch pouch in a fragrant flower-filled dell surrounded by sheer crags, sat down with his back against a grassy shelf, closed his eyes, and dozed. Then came a moist little puff of wind spinning dizzily down the funnels and grooves of the mountain, and on its breath a very strong, curious smell. A smell which made Publius Vagiennius, eyes gleaming excitedly, sit up with a jerk. For it was a smell he knew. Snails. Big, fat, juicy, sweet, succulent, ambrosiac snails! In the towering coastal alps of Liguria and in the higher alps behind whence came Publius Vagiennius there were snails. He had grown up on snails. He had become addicted to putting garlic in everything he ate thanks to snails. He had become one of the world's most knowledgeable connoisseurs of snails. He dreamed one day of breeding snails for the market, even of producing a brand-new breed of snails. Some men's noses were tuned to wines, other men's noses were tuned to perfumes, but the nose of Publius Vagiennius was tuned to snails. And that whiff of snails which came borne on the wind off the citadel mount told him that somewhere up aloft dwelled snails of an unparalleled deliciousness. With the industry of a pig on the trail of truffles, he got to work following the evidence of his olfactory apparatus, prowling the flanges of rock for a way up to the snail colony. Not since coming to Africa with Lucius Cornelius Sulla in September of the year before had he so much as tasted a snail. African snails were held to be the best in the world, but wherever they lived he hadn't found out, and those which came into the markets of Utica and Cirta went straight to the tables of the military tribunes and the legates if they didn't go straight to Rome, that is. Anyone less motivated would not have found the ancient fumarole, its volcanic vapors long since spent, for it lay behind a seemingly uninterrupted wall of basalt formed in tall columnar crystals; nose down, Publius Vagiennius sniffed his way around an optical illusion and found a huge chimney. During the passage of millions of years of inactivity, dust blown in by winds had filled the vent to the level of the ground outside and was piling up against the leeward wall higher and higher, but it was still possible for a man to gain access to the interior of this natural cavity. It measured some twenty feet across, and perhaps two hundred feet upward there gleamed a patch of sky. The walls were vertical, and to almost all observers appeared unscalable. But Publius Vagiennius was an alpine man; he was also a snail gastronome on the track of a superlative taste experience. So he climbed the fumarole not without difficulty, but certainly without ever being in real danger of falling. And at its top he emerged onto a grassy shelf perhaps a hundred feet long and fifty feet wide at its widest point, which was where the chimney came to its termination. Because all of this occurred on the north face of the rugged volcanic outcrop actually the eroded remnant of the lava plug, for the outer mountain itself had disappeared aeons before the shelf was permanently wet from seepage, some of which dripped over the rim of the fumarole, but most of which ran down the rocks on the outside at the point where the shelf sloped to form a fissure. A great crag some hundred feet above overhung most of the shelf, and the cliff between shelf and overhang was hollowed out into an open-fronted cave wet with seepage, a wonderful wall of ferns, mosses, liverworts, and sedges; at one place so much water was being squeezed out of the rock by the enormous pressures of the upper mountain that a tiny rivulet twinkled and fell with copious splashes along its way, and ran off with the other seepage over the edge of the shelf. Clearly this was the reason why the grass on the plain at the northern base of the outcrop was sweeter. Where the great cave now yawned had once been a deposit of mud agglomerate which penetrated much deeper into the lava plug, gathered water, and emerged to the surface only to be greedily chewed away by wind and frosts. One day, the expert mountain man Publius Vagiennius knew, the basalt crag teetering so ominously overhead would become undermined enough to break off; shelf and cave would be buried, as would the old volcanic chimney. The great cave was perfect snail country, permanently damp, a pocket of humid air in a notoriously dry land, stuffed with all the decayed plant matter and minute dead insects snails adored, always shady, protected from the brunt of the winds by a crag from below that reared up much higher than the shelf for a third of its length, and curved outward, thus deflecting the winds. The whole place reeked of snails, but not snails of any kind known to Publius Vagiennius, said his nose. When he finally saw one, he gaped. Its shell was as big as the palm of his hand! Having seen one, he soon distinguished dozens, and then hundreds, none of them shorter in the shell than his index finger, some of them longer than his outstretched hand. Hardly believing his eyes, he climbed up into the cave, scouted it with ever-increasing amazement, and finally arrived at its far edge, where he found a way up and up and up; not a snake path, he thought in amusement, but a snail path! The path dived into a crevice which opened into a smaller, more enclosed, ferny cave. The snails kept getting more numerous. And then he found himself around the side of the overhang, discovered it was in itself over a hundred feet thick, kept on climbing until, with a heave, he came out of Snail Paradise into Snail Tartarus, the dry and windswept lava plug atop the overhang. He gasped, panicked, ducked quickly behind a rock; for there not five hundred feet above him was the fortress. So easy was the incline he could have walked up it without a staff, and so low was the citadel wall he could have pulled himself over it without a helping shove from beneath. Publius Vagiennius descended back to the snail path, got down into the lower reaches of the cave, and there paused to pop half a dozen of the largest snails into the bloused chest section of his tunic, each well wrapped in wet leaves. Then he began the serious descent, hindered by his precious cargo yet inspired by it to superhuman feats of rock climbing. And finally emerged into his little flower-filled dell. A long drink of water, and he felt better; his snails were snug, slimy, safe. Not intending to share them with anyone, he transferred them from his tunic to his lunch pouch, complete with wet leaves and a few chunks of much drier humus collected in the dell, moistened from his water bag. The lunch pouch he tied securely to prevent the snails' escape, and put it in a shady place. The next day he dined superbly, having brought a kettle with him in which to steam two of his catches, and some good oil-and-garlic sauce. Oh, what snails! Size in a snail most definitely did not mean toughness. Size in a snail simply meant additional nuances of flavor and more to eat with a lot less fiddling about. He dined on two snails each day for six days, making one more trip up the fumarole to fetch down the second half dozen. But on the seventh day his conscience began to gnaw at him; had he been a more introspective sort of fellow, he might have come to the conclusion that his pangs of conscience were increasing in linear proportion to his pangs of snail-sated indigestion. At first all he thought was that he was a selfish mentula, to hoard the snails entirely for himself when he had good friends among his squadron's members. And then he began to think about the fact that he had discovered a way to scale the mountain. For three more days he battled his conscience, and finally suffered from an attack of gastritis which quite killed all his appetite for snails and made him wish he had never heard of them. That made up his mind. He didn't bother about reporting to his squadron commander; he went straight to the top. Roughly in the center of the camp, where the via praetoria connecting the main and rear gates intersected with the via principalis connecting the two side gates, sat the general's command tent and its flagpole, with an open space on either flank for assemblies. Here, in a hide structure substantial enough to warrant a proper wooden framework, Gaius Marius had his command headquarters and his living quarters; under the shade of a long awning which extended in front of the main entrance was a table and chair, occupied by the military tribune of the day. It was his duty to screen those wanting to see the general, or to route inquiries about this or that to the proper destinations. Two sentries stood one to either side of the entrance, at ease but vigilant, the monotony of this duty alleviated by the fact that they could overhear all conversation between the duty tribune and those who came to see him. Quintus Sertorius was on duty, and enjoying himself enormously. Solving conundrums of supply, discipline, morale, and men appealed to him, and he loved the increasingly complex and responsible tasks Gaius Marius gave him. If ever there was a case of hero worship, it existed in Quintus Sertorius, its object Gaius Marius; the embryonic master-soldier recognizing the mature form. Nothing Gaius Marius could have asked of him would have seemed a distasteful chore to Quintus Sertorius, so where other junior military tribunes loathed desk duty outside the general's tent, Quintus Sertorius welcomed it. When the Ligurian horse trooper lurched up with the gait peculiar to men who straddle horses with their legs hanging down unsupported all their lives, Quintus Sertorius regarded him with interest. Not a very prepossessing sort of fellow, he had a face only his mother could have thought beautiful, but his mail shirt was buffed up nicely, his soft-soled Ligurian felt riding shoes were adorned with a pair of sparkling spurs, and his leather knee breeches were respectably clean. If he smelled a little of horses, that was only to be expected; all troopers did, it was ingrained, and had nothing to do with how many baths they took or how often they washed their clothes. One pair of shrewd brown eyes looked into another pair, each liking what it saw. No decorations yet, thought Quintus Sertorius, but then, the cavalry hadn't really seen any action yet, either. Young for this job, thought Publius Vagiennius, but a real neat-looking soldier, if ever I saw one typical Roman foot-slogger, though; no taste for horses. "Publius Vagiennius, Ligurian cavalry squadron," said Publius Vagiennius. "I'd like to see Gaius Marius." "Rank?" asked Quintus Sertorius. "Trooper," said Publius Vagiennius. "Your business?" "That's private." "The general," said Quintus Sertorius pleasantly, "doesn't see ordinary troopers of auxiliary cavalry, especially escorted by no one save themselves. Where's your tribune, trooper?" "He don't know I'm here," said Publius Vagiennius, looking mulish. "My business is private." "Gaius Marius is a very busy man," said Quintus Sertorius. Publius Vagiennius leaned both hands on the table and thrust his head closer, almost asphyxiating Sertorius with the smell of garlic. "Now listen, young sir, you tell Gaius Marius I've got a proposition of great advantage to him but I'm not going to spill it to anyone else, and that's final." Keeping his eyes aloof and his face straight while he was dying to burst out laughing, Quintus Sertorius got to his feet. "Wait here, trooper," he said. The interior of the tent was divided into two areas by a leather wall sliced up its center to form a flap. The back room formed Marius's living quarters, the front room his office. This front room was by far the bigger of the two, and held an assortment of folding chairs and tables, racks of maps, some models of siege-works the engineers had been playing with regarding Muluchath Mountain, and portable sets of pigeonholed shelves in which reposed various documents, scrolls, book buckets, and loose papers. Gaius Marius was sitting on his ivory curule chair to one side of the big folding table he called his personal desk, with Aulus Manlius, his legate, on its other side, and Lucius Cornelius Sulla, his quaestor, between them. They were clearly engaged in the activity which they detested most, but which was dear to the hearts of the bureaucrats who ran the Treasury going through the accounts and keeping the books. That this was a preliminary conference was easy to see for a Quintus Sertorius; if it had been serious, several clerks and scribes would also have been in attendance. "Gaius Marius, I apologize for interrupting you," said Sertorius, rather diffidently. Something in his tone made all three men lift their heads to look at him closely. "You're forgiven, Quintus Sertorius. What is it?" asked Marius, smiling. "Well, it's probably a complete waste of your time, but I've got a trooper of Ligurian cavalry outside who insists on seeing you, Gaius Marius, but won't tell me why." "A trooper of Ligurian cavalry," said Marius slowly. "And what does his tribune have to say?" "He hasn't consulted his tribune." "Oh, top secret, eh?" Marius surveyed Sertorius shrewdly. "Why should I see this man, Quintus Sertorius?" Quintus Sertorius grinned. "If I could tell you that, I'd be a lot better at my job," he said. "I don't know why, and that's an honest answer. But I don't know, I'm probably wrong, but I think you should see him, Gaius Marius. I've got a feeling about it." Marius laid down the paper in his hand. "Bring him in." The sight of all the Senior Command sitting together did not even dent Publius Vagiennius's confidence; he stood blinking in the dimmer light, no fear on his face. "This is Publius Vagiennius," said Sertorius, preparing to leave again. "Stay here, Quintus Sertorius," said Marius. "Well now, Publius Vagiennius, what have you to say to me?" "Quite a lot," said Publius Vagiennius. "Then spit it out, man!" "I will, I will!" said Publius Vagiennius, uncowed. "The thing is, I'm just going through my options first. Do I lay my information, or put up my business proposition?" "Does one hinge upon the other?" asked Aulus Manlius. "It most certainly do, Aulus Manlius." "Then let's have the business proposition first," said Marius, poker-faced. "I like the oblique approach." "Snails," said Publius Vagiennius. All four Romans looked at him, but no one spoke. "My business proposition," said Publius Vagiennius patiently. "It's snails. The biggest, juiciest snails you ever seen!" "So that's why you reek of garlic!" said Sulla. "Can't eat snails without garlic," said Vagiennius. "How can we help you with your snails?" asked Marius. "I want a concession," said Vagiennius, "and I want a introduction to the right people in Rome to market them." "I see." Marius looked at Manlius, Sulla, Sertorius. No one was smiling. "All right, you've got your concession, and I imagine between us we can scrape up the odd introduction. Now what's the information you want to lay?" "I found a way up the mountain." Sulla and Aulus Manlius sat up straight. ''You found a way up the mountain," said Marius slowly. "Yes." Marius got up from behind the table. "Show me," he said. But Publius Vagiennius backed away. "Well, I will, Gaius Marius, I will! But not until we sort out my snails." "Can't it wait, man?" asked Sulla, looking ominous. "No, Lucius Cornelius, it can't!" said Publius Vagiennius, thereby demonstrating that he knew all the names of the Senior Command when he saw them. "The way to the top of the mountain goes straight through the middle of my snail patch. And it's my snail patch! The best snails in the whole world too! Here." He unslung his lunch pouch from its rather incongruous resting place athwart his long cavalry sword, opened it, and carefully withdrew an eight-inch-long snail shell, which he put on Marius's desk. They all looked at it fixedly, in complete silence. Since the surface of the table was cool and sleek, after a moment or two the snail ventured out, for it was hungry, and it had been jolted around inside Publius Vagiennius's lunch pouch for some time, deprived of tranquillity. Now it rabbited out of its hat as snails do, not emerging like a tortoise, but rather jacking its shell up into the air and expanding into existence under it via slimy amorphous lumps. One such lump formed itself into a tapering tail, and the opposite lump into a stumpy head which lifted bleary stalks into the air by growing them out of nothing. Its metamorphosis complete, it began to chomp quite audibly upon the mulch Publius Vagiennius had wrapped around it. "Now that," said Gaius Marius, "is what I call a snail!" "Rather!" breathed Quintus Sertorius. "You could feed an army on those," said Sulla, who was a conservative eater, and didn't like snails any more than he liked mushrooms. "That's it!" yelped Publius Vagiennius. "That's just it! I don't want them greedy mentulae" his audience winced "pinching my snails! There's a lot of snails, but five hundred soldiers'd see the end of them! Now I want to bring them to some place handy to Rome and breed them, and I don't want my snail patch ruined either. I want that concession, and I want my snail patch kept safe from all the cunni in this here army!" "It's an army of cunni all right," said Marius gravely. "It so happens," drawled Aulus Manlius in his extremely upper-class accent, "that I can help you, Publius Vagiennius. I have a client from Tarquinia Etruria, you know who has been getting together a very exclusive and lucrative little business in the Cuppedenis markets Rome, you know selling snails. His name is Marcus Fulvius not a noble Fulvius, you know and I advanced him a little money to get himself started a couple of years ago. He's doing well. But I imagine he'd be very happy to come to some sort of agreement with you, looking at this magnificent truly magnificent, Publius Vagiennius! snail." "You got a deal, Aulus Manlius," said the trooper. "Now will you show us the way up the mountain?" demanded Sulla, still impatient. "In a moment, in a moment," said Vagiennius, turned to where Marius was lacing on his boots. "First I want to hear the general say my snail patch will be safe." Marius finished with his boots and straightened up to look Publius Vagiennius in the eye. "Publius Vagiennius," he said, "you are a man after my own heart! You combine a sound business head with a staunchly patriotic spirit. Fear not, you have my word your snail patch will be kept safe. Now lead us to the mountain, if you please." When the investigative party set out shortly thereafter, it had been augmented by the chief of engineers. They rode to save time, Vagiennius on his better horse, Gaius Marius on the elderly but elegant steed he saved mostly for parades, Sulla adhering to his preference for a mule, and Aulus Manlius and Quintus Sertorius and the engineer on ponies out of the general compound. The fumarole represented no difficulties to the engineer. "Easy," he said, gazing up the chimney. "I'll build a nice wide staircase all the way up, there's room." "How long will it take you?" asked Marius. "I just happen to have a few cartloads of planks and small beams with me, so oh, two days, if I work day and night," said the engineer. "Then get to it at once," said Marius, gazing at Vagiennius with renewed respect. "You must be three parts goat to be able to climb up this," he said. "Mountain born, mountain bred," said Vagiennius smugly. "Well, your snail patch will be safe until the staircase is done," Marius said as he led the way back to the horses. "Once your snails come under threat, I'll deal with it myself." Five days later the Muluchath citadel belonged to Gaius Marius, together with a fabulous hoard of silver coins, silver bars, and a thousand talents in gold; there were also two small chests, one stuffed with the finest, reddest carbunculus stones anyone had ever seen, and the other stuffed with stones no one had ever seen, long naturally faceted crystals carefully polished to reveal that they were deep pink at one end, shading through to dark green at the other. "A fortune!" said Sulla, holding up one of the particolored stones the locals called lychnites. "Indeed, indeed!" gloated Marius. As for Publius Vagiennius, he was decorated at a full assembly of the army, receiving a complete set of nine solid-silver phalerae, these being big round medallions sculpted in high relief and joined together in three rows of three by chased, silver-inlaid straps so that they could be worn on the chest over the top of the cuirass or mail shirt. He quite liked this distinction, but he was far better pleased by the fact that Marius had honored his word, and protected the snail patch from predators by fencing off a route for the soldiers to take to the top of the mountain. This passageway Marius had then screened with hides, so that the soldiers never knew what succulent goodies cruised rheumily through the cave of ferns. And when the mountain was taken, Marius ordered the staircase demolished immediately. Not only that, but Aulus Manlius had written off to his client the ignoble Marcus Fulvius, setting a partnership in train for when the African campaign was over, and Publius Vagiennius had his discharge. "Mind you, Publius Vagiennius," said Marius as he strapped on the nine silver phalerae, "the four of us expect a proper reward in years to come free snails for our tables, with an extra share for Aulus Manlius." "It's a deal," said Publius Vagiennius, who had discovered to his sorrow that his liking for snails had permanently gone since his illness. However, he now regarded snails with the jealous eye of a preserver rather than a destroyer.
By the end of Sextilis the army was on its way back from the borderlands, eating very well off the land because the harvest was in. The visit to the edge of King Bocchus's realm had had the desired effect; convinced that once he had Numidia conquered, Marius was not going to stop, Bocchus decided to throw in his lot with his son-in-law, Jugurtha. He therefore hustled his Moorish army to the Muluchath River and there met Jugurtha, who waited until Marius was gone, then reoccupied his denuded mountain citadel. The two kings followed in the wake of the Romans as they headed east, not in any hurry to attack, and keeping far enough back to remain undetected. And then when Marius was within a hundred miles of Cirta, the kings struck. It was just on dusk, and the Roman army was busy pitching camp. Even so, the attack did not catch the men completely off-guard, for Marius pitched camp with scrupulous attention to safety. The surveyors came in and computed the four corners, which were staked out, then the whole army moved with meticulous precision into the future camp's interior, knowing by rote exactly where each legion was to go, each cohort of each legion, each century of each cohort. No one tripped over anyone else; no one went to the wrong place; no one erred as to the amount of ground he was to occupy. The baggage mule train was brought inside too, the noncombatants of each century took charge of each octet's mules and the century's cart, and the train attendants saw to stabling of the animals and storage of the carts. Armed with digging tools and palisade stakes from their backpacks, the soldiers, still completely armed, went to the sections of boundary always designated to them. They worked in their mail shirts and girt with swords and daggers; their spears were planted firmly in the ground and their shields propped against them, after which their helmets were hooked by their chin straps around the spears and over the fronts of the shields so that a wind could not blow the erections over. In that way, every man's helmet, shield, and spear were within reach while the laboring went on. The scouts did not find the Enemy, but came in reporting all clear, then went to do their share of pitching camp. The sun had set. And in the brief lustrous dimness before darkness fell, the Numidian and Mauretanian armies spilled out from behind a nearby ridge and descended upon the half-finished camp. All the fighting took place during darkness, a desperate business which went against the Romans for some hours. But Quintus Sertorius got the noncombatants kindling torches until finally the field was lit up enough for Marius to see what was happening, and from that point on, things began to improve for the Romans. Sulla distinguished himself mightily, rallying those troops who began to flag or panic, appearing everywhere he was needed as if by magic, but in reality because he had that inbuilt military eye which could discern where the next weak spot was going to develop before it actually did. Sword blooded, blood up, he took to battle like a veteran brave in attack, careful in defense, brilliant in difficulties. And by the eighth hour of darkness, victory went to the Romans. The Numidian and Mauretanian armies drew off in fairly good order, yet left several thousands of their soldiers behind on the field, where Marius had lost surprisingly few. In the morning the Roman army moved on, Marius having decided rest for his men was out of the question. The dead were properly cremated, and the Enemy dead were left for the vultures. This time the legions marched in square, with the cavalry disposed at front and at back of the compressed column, and the mules as well as the baggage mule train right in the middle. If a second attack occurred on the march, all the soldiers had to do was face outward in each square, while the cavalry was already placed to form wings. Each man now wore his helmet on his head, its colored horse's-tail plume fixed to its top; he carried his shield uncovered by its protective hide, and he also carried both his spears. Not until Cirta was reached would vigilance be relaxed. On the fourth day, with Cirta the coming night's destination, the kings struck again. This time Marius was ready. The legions formed into squares, each square formed part of a vaster square with the baggage in its middle, and then each small square dissolved into rank and file to double its thickness facing the Enemy. As always, Jugurtha counted upon his many thousands of Numidian horse to unsettle the Roman front; superb riders, they used neither saddle nor bridle, and wore no armor, relying for their punch and power upon fleetness, bravery and their deadly accuracy with javelin and long-sword. But neither his cavalry nor Bocchus's could break through into the center of the Roman square, and their infantry forces broke against a solid wall of legionaries undismayed by horse or foot. Sulla fought in the front line with the leading cohort of the leading legion, for Marius was in control of tactics and the element of surprise was negligible; when Jugurtha's infantry lines finally broke, it was Sulla who led the charge against them, Sertorius not far behind. Sheer desperation to be rid of Rome for once and for all kept Jugurtha in the battle too long. When he did decide to withdraw, it was already too late to do so, and he had no choice but to struggle on against a Roman force sensing victory. So the Roman victory when it came was complete, rounded, whole. The Numidian and Mauretanian armies were destroyed, most of their men dead on the field. Jugurtha and Bocchus got away. Marius rode into Cirta at the head of an exhausted column, every man in it jubilant; there would be no more war on a grand scale in Africa the least soldier knew it. This time Marius quartered his army within Cirta's walls, unwilling to risk exposure outside. His troops were billeted upon hapless Numidian civilians, and hapless Numidian civilians made up the work parties he sent out the next day to clean up the field of battle, burn the mountains of African dead, and bring in the far fewer Roman dead for the proper obsequies. Quintus Sertorius found himself placed in charge of all the decorations which Marius intended to award at a special assembly of the army following the cremation of the fallen; he was also placed in charge of organizing the ceremony. As it was the first such ceremony he had ever attended, he had no idea how to go about his task, but he was intelligent and resourceful. So he found a veteran primus pilus centurion, and asked him. "Now what you got to do, young Sertorius," said this old stager, "is get all of Gaius Marius's own decorations out, and display them on the general's dais so the men can see what sort of soldier he was. These are good boys of ours, Head Count or not, but they don't know nothing about the military life, and they don't come from families with a military tradition. So how do they know what sort of soldier Gaius Marius was? I do! That's because I been with Gaius Marius in every campaign he fought since oh, Numantia." "But I don't think he has his decorations with him," said Sertorius, dismayed. "Course he has, young Sertorius!" said the veteran of a hundred battles and skirmishes. "They're his luck." Sure enough, when applied to, Gaius Marius admitted that he did have his decorations along on the campaign. Looking a little embarrassed, until Sertorius told him of the centurion's remark about luck. All of Cirta turned out to ogle, for it was an impressive ceremony, the army in full parade regalia, each legion's silver eagle wreathed with the laurels of victory, each maniple's standard of a silver hand wreathed with the laurels of victory, each century's cloth vexillum banner wreathed with the laurels of victory. Every man wore his decorations, but since this was a new army of new men, only a few of the centurions and a half-dozen soldiers sported armbands, neck rings, medallions. Of course Publius Vagiennius wore his set of silver phalerae. Ah, but Gaius Marius himself reigned supreme! So thought the dazzled Quintus Sertorius, standing waiting to be awarded his Gold Crown for a single combat upon the field; Sulla too was waiting to be awarded a Gold Crown. There they were, ranged behind him on the high dais, Gaius Marius's decorations. Six silver spears for killing a man in single combat on six different occasions; a scarlet vexillum banner embroidered in gold and finished with a fringe of gold bullion for killing several men in single combat on the same occasion; two silver-encrusted shields of the old oval pattern for holding hotly contested ground against odds. Then there were the decorations he wore. His cuirass was of hardened leather rather than the normal silver-plated bronze of a senior officer, for over it he wore all his phalerae on their gold-encrusted harnesses no less than three full sets of nine in gold, two on the front of the cuirass, one on the back; six gold and four silver torcs depended from little straps across shoulders and neck; his arms and wrists glittered with gold and silver armillae bracelets. Then there were his crowns. On his head he wore one Corona Civica, which was the crown of oak leaves awarded only to a man who had saved the lives of his fellows and held the ground on which he had done the deed for the rest of the battle. Two more oak-leaf crowns hung from two of the silver spears, indicating that he had won the Corona Civica no fewer than three times; on two more of the silver spears hung two Gold Crowns for conspicuous bravery, crowns made of gold hammered into the shape of laurel leaves; on the fifth spear hung a Corona Muralis, a gold crown with a crenellated battlement awarded for being the first man to scale the walls of an enemy town; and on the sixth spear hung a Corona Vallaris, a gold crown awarded for being the first man into an enemy camp. What a man! thought Quintus Sertorius, mentally cataloguing these talismans. Yes, the only awards he hadn't won were the naval crown, given for valor in a sea battle Marius had never fought at sea, so that omission was logical and the Corona Graminea, the simple wreath of common grass awarded to a man who literally by his own valor and initiative saved a whole legion, or even a whole army. The grass crown had been given only a handful of times during the whole history of the Republic, the first time to the legendary Lucius Siccius Dentatus, who had won no less than twenty-six different crowns but only one Corona Graminea. To Scipio Africanus during the second war against Carthage. Sertorius frowned, dredging up the rest of the winners. Oh, Publius Decius Mus had won it during the first Samnite war! And Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosis Cunctator had won it for stalking Hannibal up and down Italy, thus preventing Hannibal's gaining the confidence to attack Rome herself. Then Sulla was called to receive his Gold Crown, and a full set of nine gold phalerae as well, for his valor during the first of the two battles against the kings. How pleased he looked, how enhanced. Quintus Sertorius had heard that he was a cold sort of fellow, and had a cruel streak; but not once in their time together in Africa had he seen evidence to substantiate these accusations, and surely if they were true, Gaius Marius would not have liked him as well as he clearly did. For of course Quintus Sertorius did not understand that when life was going well, and was enjoyable, and held enough mental and physical challenge, coldness and cruelty could be buried, however temporarily; he also did not understand that Sulla was quite shrewd enough to know Gaius Marius was not the man to whom to show the baser, darker side of himself. In fact, Lucius Cornelius Sulla had been on his very best behavior ever since Marius had asked for him as his quaestor and had not found it at all difficult to be so, either. "Oh!" Quintus Sertorius jumped. He had been so deep in his thoughts that he hadn't heard his name called, and got a dig in the ribs from his servant, almost as proud of Quintus Sertorius as Quintus Sertorius was of himself. Up onto the dais he stumbled, and stood there while the great Gaius Marius placed the Gold Crown on his head, then suffered the cheers of the army, and had his hand shaken by Gaius Marius and Aulus Manlius. And after all the tores and bracelets and medallions and banners were handed out, and some of the cohorts got group awards of gold or silver wreaths for their standard poles, Gaius Marius spoke. "Well done, men of the Head Count!" he cried, the dazed recipients of decorations standing gathered around him. "You have proven yourselves braver than the brave, more willing than the willing, harder working than the hardworking, more intelligent than the intelligent! There's many a naked standard pole which now can be adorned with the decorations won by its owners! When we walk in triumph through Rome, we'll give them all something to look at! And in future, let no Roman say that the men of the Head Count don't care enough about Rome to win battles for her!"
November was just beginning to promise rain when an embassage arrived in Cirta from King Bocchus of Mauretania. Marius let its members stew for several days, ignoring their pleas of urgency. "They'll be soft as cushions," he said to Sulla when finally he consented to see them. "I'm not going to forgive King Bocchus," he said as his opening gambit, "so go home! You're wasting my time." The spokesman was a younger brother of the King, one Bogud, and now Prince Bogud stepped forward quickly, before Marius could wave at his lictors to eject the embassage. "Gaius Marius, Gaius Marius, my brother the King is only too aware of the magnitude of his transgressions!" said the prince. ' 'He isn't asking for forgiveness, nor is he asking that you recommend to the Senate and People of Rome that he be reinstated as a Friend and Ally of the Roman People. What he does ask is that in the spring you send two of your most senior legates to his court in Tingis beyond the Pillars of Hercules. There he will explain to them most carefully why he allied himself with King Jugurtha, and he asks only that they listen to him with open ears. They are not to say one word to him in reply they are to report what he has said to you, so that you may reply. Do, I entreat you, grant my brother the King this favor!" "What, send two of my top men all the way to Tingis at the start of the campaigning season?" asked Marius with well-feigned incredulity. "No! The best I'll do is send them as far as Saldae." This was a small seaport not far to the west of Cirta's seaport, Rusicade. The whole embassage threw up hands in horror. "Quite impossible!" cried Bogud. "My brother the King wishes to avoid King Jugurtha at all costs!" "Icosium," said Marius, naming another seaport, this one about two hundred miles to the west of Rusicade. "I'll send my senior legate, Aulus Manlius, and my quaestor, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, as far as Icosium but now, Prince Bogud, not in the spring." "Impossible!" cried Bogud. "The King is in Tingis!" "Rubbish!" said Marius scornfully. "The King is on his way back to Mauretania with his tail between his legs. If you send a fast rider after him, I'll guarantee he has no trouble reaching Icosium about the same moment as my legates sail in." He glared at Bogud balefully. "That is my best and only! offer. Take it or leave it." Bogud took it. When the embassage embarked two days later, it sailed together with Aulus Manlius and Sulla upon a ship bound for Icosium, having sent that fast rider to catch up with the tattered remnants of the Moorish army. "He was waiting for us when we sailed in, just as you said," Sulla reported a month later, upon his return. "Where's Aulus Manlius?" asked Marius. Sulla's eyes twinkled. "Aulus Manlius isn't well, so he decided to come back overland." "A serious indisposition?" "I've never seen a poorer sailor," said Sulla reminiscently. "Well, I never knew that about him!" said Marius, amazed. "I take it then that you did most of the careful listening, not Aulus Manlius?" "Yes," said Sulla, and grinned. "He's a funny little man, Bocchus. Round like a ball from too many sweeties. Very pompous on the surface, very timid underneath." "It's a combination goes together," said Marius. "Well, it's clear enough that he's afraid of Jugurtha; I don't think he's lying about that. And if we were to give him strong guarantees that we have no intention of removing him from rule in Mauretania, I think he'd be delighted to serve Rome's interests. But Jugurtha works on him, you know." "Jugurtha works on everyone. Did you adhere to Bocchus's rule about saying nothing, or did you speak up?" "Oh, I let him talk himself out first," said Sulla, "but then I spoke up. He tried to get all royal and dismiss me, so I told him his had been a one-sided bargain that did not bind your representatives as far as you were concerned." "What did you have to say?" asked Marius. "That if he was a clever little king, he'd ignore Jugurtha in the future and stick by Rome." "How did he take that?" "Quite well. Certainly I left him in a chastened mood." "Then we'll wait and see what happens next," said Marius. "One thing I did find out," added Sulla, "was that Jugurtha has come to the end of his recruiting tether. Even the Gaetuli are refusing to give him more men. Numidia is very tired of the war, and hardly anyone in the kingdom, be he a dweller in the settled regions or a nomad of the inland, now feels there's the remotest chance of winning." "But will they hand over Jugurtha?" Sulla shook his head. "No, of course they won't!" "Never mind," said Marius, showing his teeth. "Next year, Lucius Cornelius! Next year we'll get him."
Shortly before the old year ended, Gaius Marius received a letter from Publius Rutilius Rufus, long delayed en route by a series of appalling storms.
I know you wanted me to stand for consul in tandem with you, Gaius Marius, but an opportunity has come up which I'd be a fool to ignore. Yes, I intend to stand for the consulship of next year, and am lodging my name as a candidate tomorrow. The well seems to have run temporarily dry, you see. No one of any note is standing. What, not Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar again? I hear you ask. No, he's lying very low these days, as he belongs too obviously to that faction which has defended all our consuls responsible for the loss of so many soldier lives. So far the best nominee is a New Man of sorts Gnaeus Mallius Maximus, no less. He's not a bad sort of fellow; I could certainly work with him but if he's the best candidate in the field, I'm just about a certainty. Your own command is prorogued for the coming year, as you probably already know. Rome is really a very boring place at the moment; I have hardly any news to give you, and precious little by way of scandal. Your family are all well, Young Marius being a joy and a delight, very domineering and ahead of his years, into every sort of mischief and driving his mother mad, just as a small boy ought. However, your father-in-law, Caesar, is not well, though of course, being Caesar, he never complains. There's something wrong with his voice, and no amount of honey seems to fix it. And that really is the end of the news! How frightful. What can I talk about? Barely a page filled, and bare is right. Well, there's my niece Aurelia. And who on the face of this earth is Aurelia? I hear you ask. Nor are you one bit interested, I'll warrant. Never mind. You can listen; I'll be brief. I'm sure you know the story of Helen of Troy, even if you are an Italian hayseed with no Greek. She was so beautiful every single king and prince in all of Greece wanted to marry her. Of like kind is my niece. So beautiful that everyone of any note in Rome wants to marry her. All the children of my sister, Rutilia, are handsome, but Aurelia is more than merely handsome. When she was a child, everyone deplored her face it was too bony, too hard, too everything. But now she's turning eighteen, everyone is lauding exactly the same face. I love her very much, as a matter of fact. Now why? I hear you ask. True, I am not normally interested in the female offspring of my many close relatives, even my own daughter and my two granddaughters. But I know why I prize my darling Aurelia. Because of her serving maid. For when she turned thirteen, my sister and her husband, Marcus Aurelius Cotta, decided she ought to have a permanent maidservant who would also function as companion and watchdog. So they bought a very good girl, and gave the girl to Aurelia. Who after a very short time announced that she didn't want this particular girl. "Why?" asked my sister, Rutilia. "Because she's lazy," said the thirteen-year-old. Back the parents went to their dealer, and, after even more care, chose another girl. Whom Aurelia also refused. "Why?" asked my sister, Rutilia. "Because she thinks she can dominate me," said Aurelia. And back the parents went a third time, and they combed Spurius Postumius Glycon's books for another girl. All three, I add, were highly educated, Greek, and vocally intelligent. But Aurelia didn't want the third girl either. "Why?" asked my sister, Rutilia. "Because she's got an eye for the main chance; she's already fluttering her lashes at the steward," said Aurelia. "All right, go and pick your own maidservant!" said my sister, Rutilia, refusing to have anything more to do with the whole business. When Aurelia came home with her choice, the family was appalled. For there stood this sixteen-year-old girl of the Gallic Arverni, a vastly tall and skinny creature with a horrid round pink short-nosed face, faded blue eyes, cruelly cropped hair (it had been sold to make a wig when her previous master needed money), and the most enormous hands and feet I have ever seen on anyone, male or female. Her name, announced Aurelia, was Cardixa. Now as you know, Gaius Marius, I am always intrigued with the backgrounds of those we bring into our houses as slaves. For, it has always struck me, we spend considerably more time deciding upon the menu for a dinner party than we do upon the people whom we trust to care for our clothes, our persons, our children, and even our reputations. Whereas, it struck me immediately, my thirteen-year-old niece Aurelia had chosen this ghastly Cardixa girl for precisely the right reasons. She wanted someone loyal, hardworking, submissive, and well intentioned, rather than someone who looked good, spoke Greek like a native (don't they all?), and could hold up her end of a conversation. Thus I made it my business to find out about Cardixa, which was very simple. I merely asked Aurelia, who knew the girl's whole history. She had been sold into captivity with her mother when she was four years old, after Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus had conquered the Arverni and carved out our province of Gaul-across-the-Alps. Not long after the pair arrived in Rome, the mother died, it appears of homesickness. So the child became a kind of page girl, trotting back and forth with chamber pots, pillows, and pouffes. She was sold several times after she lost her toddler's prettiness and began to grow into the gangling homely weed I saw when Aurelia brought her home. One master had sexually molested her when she was eight; another master had flogged her every time his wife complained; a third master had her taught to read and write along with his daughter, a recalcitrant student. "So your pity was stirred, and you wanted to bring this poor creature into a kind home," I said to Aurelia. And here, Gaius Marius, is why I love this girl more than I love my own daughter. For my comment did not please her at all. She reared back a little like a serpent, and said, "Certainly not! Pity is admirable, Uncle Publius, for so all our books tell us, and our parents too. But I would find pity a poor reason for choosing a maidservant! If Cardixa's life has not been ideal, that is no fault of mine. Therefore I am in no way morally bound to rectify her misfortunes. I chose Cardixa because I am sure she will prove loyal, hardworking, submissive, and well intentioned. A pretty bucket is no guarantee that the book it contains is worth reading." Oh, don't you love her too, Gaius Marius, just a little? Thirteen years old she was at the time! And the strangest part about it was that though in my atrocious handwriting now, what she said may sound priggish, or even unfeeling, I knew she was neither prig nor cold-heart. Common sense, Gaius Marius! My niece has common sense. And how many women do you know with such a wonderful gift as that? All these fellows here want to marry her because of her face and her figure and her fortune, where I would rather give her to someone who prized her common sense. But how does one decide whose suit to favor? That is the burning question we are all asking each other.
When he laid the letter down, Gaius Marius picked up his pen and drew a sheet of paper toward him. He dipped his stylus in his inkpot, and wrote without hesitation.
Of course I understand. Go to it, Publius Rutilius! Gnaeus Mallius Maximus will need all the help he can get, and you will prove an excellent consul. As to your niece, why don't you let her pick her own husband? She seems to have done all right with her maidservant. Though I can't honestly see what all the fuss is about. Lucius Cornelius tells me he is the father of a son, but he had the news from Gaius Julius, not from Julilla. Would you do me the favor of keeping an eye on that young lady? For I do not think Julilla is like your niece in the matter of common sense, and I do not know whom else to ask, considering that I cannot very well ask her tata to keep an eye on her. I thank you for telling me Gaius Julius is unwell. I hope when you receive this, you are a new consul.
THE SIXTH YEAR (105 B.C.) IN THE CONSULSHIP OF PUBLIUS RUTILIUS RUFUS AND GNAEUS MALLIUS MAXIMUS
Though Jugurtha was not yet a fugitive in his own country, its more settled and eastern parts had certainly come to terms with the specter of the Romans, and accepted the inevitability of Roman dominance. However, Cirta, the capital, was situated in the center, so Marius decided it might be prudent to winter there himself, rather than in Utica. Cirta's inhabitants had never demonstrated any great fondness for the King, but Marius knew Jugurtha well enough to understand that he was at his most dangerous and his most charming when pressed; it would not be politic to leave Cirta open to seduction by the King. Sulla was left in Utica to govern the Roman province, while Aulus Manlius was released from service and allowed to go home. With him to Rome Manlius took the two sons of Gaius Julius Caesar, neither of whom had wanted to leave Africa. But Rutilius's letter had perturbed Marius; he had a feeling that it might be wise to give Caesar back his sons.
In January of the New Year, King Bocchus of Mauretania made up his mind at last; despite his blood and marital ties to Jugurtha, he would formally ally himself with Rome if Rome would deign to have him. So he moved from Iol to Icosium, the place where he had interviewed Sulla and the seasick Manlius two months earlier, and sent a small embassage off from Icosium to treat with Marius. Unfortunately it did not occur to him that Marius would winter anywhere save in Utica; as a result, the little delegation made Utica its goal, thus passing well to the north of Cirta and Gaius Marius. There were five Moorish ambassadors, including the King's younger brother Bogud once again, and one of his sons as well, but the party traveled in very little state and without a military escort; Bocchus wished no difficulties with Marius, and no intimations of martial intentions. He also wanted to bypass attention from Jugurtha. In consequence, the cavalcade looked exactly like a group of prosperous merchants heading home with the proceeds of a season's good trading, and was irresistibly tempting to the gangs of armed bandits who had taken advantage of the fragmentation of Numidia and the impotence of its king by helping themselves to other people's property. As the group crossed the river Ubus not far south of Hippo Regius, it was set upon by outlaws and robbed of everything save the clothes its members wore; even its retinue of slaves and servants was taken for resale in some distant market. Quintus Sertorius and his exquisitely tuned cerebral apparatus were on duty with Marius, which meant that Sulla was served by less perceptive officers. Knowing this, however, he had made it his practice to keep an eye on what was happening at the gates of the governor's palace in Utica; and, as luck would have it, he personally saw the raggle-taggle cluster of poor itinerants who stood trying fruitlessly to gain admission. "But we must see Gaius Marius!" Prince Bogud was insisting. "We are the ambassadors of King Bocchus of Mauretania, I do assure you!" Sulla recognized at least three of the group, and strolled over. "Bring them in, idiot," he said to the duty tribune, then took Bogud's arm to help him along, for he was clearly footsore. "No, the explanations can wait, Prince," he said firmly. "You need a bath, fresh clothes, food, and a rest." Some hours later he heard Bogud's story. "We have been much longer getting here than we expected," Bogud said in conclusion, "and I fear the King my brother will have despaired. May we see Gaius Marius?" "Gaius Marius is in Cirta," said Sulla easily. "I advise you to tell me what it is your king wants, and leave it to me to get word to Cirta. Otherwise, there will be more delays." "We are all blood relatives of the King, who asks Gaius Marius to send us onward to Rome, where we are to beg the Senate in person to reinstate the King in Rome's service," said Bogud. "I see." Sulla rose to his feet. "Prince Bogud, please make yourself comfortable and wait. I'll send to Gaius Marius at once, but it will be some days before we hear." Said Marius's letter, which turned up in Utica four days later:
Well, well, well! This could be quite useful, Lucius Cornelius. However, I must be extremely careful. The new senior consul, Publius Rutilius Rufus, tells me that our dear friend Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle is going around informing anyone who will listen that he intends to prosecute me for extortion and corruption in my provincial administration. Therefore I can do nothing to give him ammunition. Luckily he'll have to manufacture his evidence, as it has never been my practice to extort or corrupt well, you know that better than most, I imagine. So here is what I want you to do. I shall give audience to Prince Bogud in Cirta, which means you will have to bring the embassage here. However, before you start out, I want you to gather up every single Roman senator, tribune of the Treasury, official representative of the Senate or People of Rome, and important Roman citizen, in the whole of the Roman African province. Bring them all to Cirta with you. For I am going to interview Bogud with every single Roman notable I can find listening to every word I say, and approving in writing of whatever I decide to do.
Shouting with laughter, Sulla put the letter down. "Oh, superbly done, Gaius Marius!" he remarked to the four walls of his office, and went to scatter havoc among his tribunes and administrative officials by ordering them to scour the whole province for Roman notables. Because of its importance to Rome as a supplier of grain, Africa Province was a place the more globe-trotting members of the Senate liked to visit. It was also exotic and beautiful, and at this early time of the year, the prevailing winds being from the northern quadrant, it was a safer sea route to the east than passage across the Adriatic Sea for those who had the extra time. And though it was the rainy season, that did not mean that every day it rained; between rains the climate was deliciously balmy compared to winter-struck Europa, and cured the visitor's chilblains immediately. Thus Sulla was able to gather two globe-trotting senators and two visiting absentee landowners (including the biggest, Marcus Caelius Rufus), plus one senior Treasury official on winter vacation, and one plutocrat from Rome who had a huge business buying grain, and was currently in Utica to dabble a little in wheat futures. "But the great coup," he said to Gaius Marius the moment he arrived in Cirta fifteen days later, "was none other than Gaius Billienus, who fancied taking a look at Africa on his way to govern Asia Province. Thus I am able to offer you a praetor with proconsular imperium, no less! We also have a Treasury quaestor, Gnaeus Octavius Ruso, who fortunately happened to sail into Utica harbor just before I set out, bearing the army's wages. So I dragooned him too." "Lucius Cornelius, you're a man after my own heart!" said Marius, grinning broadly. "Oh, but you do catch on fast!" And before he saw the Moorish embassage, Marius called a council of his Roman notables. "I want to explain the situation to all of you august gentlemen exactly as it exists, and then after I have seen Prince Bogud and his fellow ambassadors in your presence, I want us to arrive at a joint decision as to what I ought to do about King Bocchus. It will be necessary for each of you to put down his opinion in writing, so that when Rome is informed, everyone can see that I did not exceed the limits of my authority," said Marius to senators, landowners, businessmen, one tribune of the Treasury, one quaestor, and one governor of a province. The outcome of the meeting was exactly what Marius had wanted; he had put his case to the Roman notables with care as well as eloquence, and was vehemently supported by his quaestor, Sulla. A peace agreement with Bocchus was highly desirable, the notables concluded, and might best be accomplished if three of the Moors were sent onward to Rome escorted by the Treasury quaestor Gnaeus Octavius Ruso, and the two remaining Moors were returned to Bocchus forthwith as evidence of Rome's good faith. So Gnaeus Octavius Ruso shepherded Bogud and two of his cousins onward to Rome, where they arrived early in March, and were heard at once by the Senate in a specially convened meeting. This was held in the temple of Bellona because the matter involved a foreign war with a foreign ruler; Bellona being Rome's own goddess of war and therefore far older than Mars, her temple was the place of choice for war meetings of the Senate. The consul Publius Rutilius Rufus delivered the Senate's verdict with the temple doors wide open to permit those who clustered outside to hear him. "Tell King Bocchus," Rutilius Rufus said in his high, light voice, "that the Senate and People of Rome remember both an offense and a favor. It is clear to us that King Bocchus rues his offense sincerely, so it would be unduly churlish of us, the Senate and People of Rome, to withhold our forgiveness. Therefore is he forgiven. However, the Senate and People of Rome now require that King Bocchus do us a favor of similar magnitude, for to date we have no favor to remember alongside the offense. We make no stipulations as to what this favor should be, we leave it entirely up to King Bocchus. And when the favor has been shown to us as unequivocally as the offense was, the Senate and People of Rome will be happy to give King Bocchus of Mauretania a treaty of friendship and alliance." Bocchus got this answer at the end of March, delivered in person by Bogud and the two other ambassadors. Terror of Roman reprisals had outweighed the King's fears for his person, so rather than retreat to far-off Tingis beyond the Pillars of Hercules, Bocchus had elected to remain in Icosium. Gaius Marius, he reasoned, would treat with him from this distance, but no further. And to protect himself from Jugurtha, he brought a new Moorish army to Icosium, and fortified the tiny port settlement as best he could. Off went Bogud to see Marius in Cirta. "My brother the King begs and beseeches Gaius Marius to tell him what favor he can do Rome of similar magnitude to his offense." asked Bogud, on his knees. "Get up, man, get up!" said Marius testily. "I am not a king! I am a proconsul of the Senate and People of Rome! No one grovels to me, it demeans me as much as it does the groveler!" Bogud clambered to his feet, bewildered. "Gaius Marius, help us!" he cried. "What favor can the Senate want?" "I would help you if I could, Prince Bogud," said Marius, studying his nails. "Then send one of your senior officers to speak to the King! Perhaps in personal discussion, a way might be found." "All right," said Marius suddenly. "Lucius Cornelius Sulla can go to see your king. Provided that the meeting place is no further from Cirta than Icosium."
"Of course it's Jugurtha we want as the favor," said Marius to Sulla as his quaestor prepared to ship out. "Ah, I'd give my eyeteeth to be going in your place, Lucius Cornelius! But since I cannot, I'm very glad I'm sending a man with a decent pair of eyeteeth." Sulla grinned. "Once they're in, I find it hard to let go," he said. "Then sink them in, twice as deep for me! And if you can, bring me Jugurtha!" So it was with swelling heart and iron determination that Sulla set sail from Rusicade; with him he had a cohort of Roman legionaries, a cohort of light-armed Italian troops from the tribe of the Paeligni in Samnium, a personal escort of slingers from the Balearic Isles, and one squadron of cavalry, Publius Vagiennius's unit from Liguria. The time was mid-May. All the way to Icosium he chafed, in spite of the fact that he was a good sailor, and had discovered in himself a great liking for the sea and ships. This expedition was a lucky one. And a significant one for himself. He knew it, as surely as if he too had received a prophecy. Oddly enough, he had never sought an interview with Martha the Syrian, though Gaius Marius urged him to it often; his refusal had nothing to do with disbelief, or lack of the necessary superstition. A Roman, Lucius Cornelius Sulla was riddled with superstitions. The truth was, he was too afraid. Yearn though he did to have some other human being confirm his own suspicions about his high destiny, he knew too much about his weaknesses and his darknesses to go as serenely into prognostication as had Marius. But now, sailing into Icosium Bay, he wished he had gone to see Martha. For his future seemed to press down on him as heavily as a blanket, and he did not know, could not feel, just what it held. Great things. But evil too. Almost alone among his peers, Sulla understood the tangible brooding presence of evil. The Greeks argued about its nature interminably, and many argued indeed that it did not exist at all. But Sulla knew it existed. And he very much feared it existed in himself. Icosium Bay craved some majestic city, but instead owned only a small township huddled in its back reaches, where a rugged range of coastal mountains came right down to the shore, and rendered it both sheltered and remote. During the winter rains many streamlets discharged themselves into the water, and more than a dozen islands floated like wonderful ships with the tall local cypresses appearing as masts and sails upon them. A beautiful place, Icosium, thought Sulla. On the shore adjacent to the town there waited perhaps a thousand Moorish Berber horse troopers, equipped as were the Numidians no saddles, no bridles, no body armor just a cluster of spears held in one hand, and long-swords, and shields. "Ah!" said Bogud as he and Sulla landed from the first lighter. "The King has sent his favorite son to meet you, Lucius Cornelius." "What's his name?" asked Sulla. "Volux." The young man rode up, armed like his men, but upon a bedizened horse bearing both saddle and bridle. Sulla found himself liking the way his hand was shaken, and liking Prince Volux's manner; but where was the King? Nowhere could his practised eye discern the usual clutter and scurrying confusion which surrounded a king in residence. "The King has retreated south about a hundred miles into the mountains, Lucius Cornelius," the prince explained as they walked to a spot where Sulla could supervise the unloading of his troops and equipment. Sulla's skin prickled. "That was no part of the King's bargain with Gaius Marius," he said. "I know," said Volux, looking uneasy. "You see, King Jugurtha has arrived in the neighborhood." Sulla froze. "Is this a trap, Prince Volux?" "No, no!" cried the young man, both hands going out. "I swear to you by all our gods, Lucius Cornelius, that it is not a trap! But Jugurtha smells a dead thing, because he was given to understand that the King my father was going back to Tingis, yet still the King my father lingers here at Icosium. So Jugurtha has moved into the hills with a small army of Gaetuli not enough men to attack us, but too many for us to attack him. The King my father decided to withdraw from the sea in order to make Jugurtha believe that if he expects someone from Rome, he expects his visitor to travel on the road. So Jugurtha followed him. Jugurtha knows nothing of your arrival here, we are sure. You were wise to come by sea." "Jugurtha will find out I'm here soon enough," said Sulla grimly, thinking of his inadequate escort, fifteen hundred strong. "Hopefully not, or at least, not yet," said Volux. "I led a thousand of my troopers out of the King my father's camp three days ago as if on maneuvers, and came up to the coast, We are not officially at war with Numidia, so Jugurtha has little excuse to attack us, but he's not sure what the King my father intends to do either, and he dare not risk an outright breach with us until he knows more. I do assure you that he elected to remain watching our camp in the south, and that his scouts will not get anywhere near Icosium while my troopers patrol the area." Sulla rolled a skeptical eye at the young man, but said nothing of his feelings; they were not a very practical lot, these Moorish royals. Fretting too at the painful slowness of the disembarkation for Icosium possessed no more than twenty lighters all told, and he could see that it would be this time tomorrow before the process was complete he sighed, shrugged. No point in worrying; either Jugurtha knew, or did not know. "Whereabouts is Jugurtha located?" he asked. "About thirty miles from the sea, on a small plain in the midst of the mountains, due south of here. On the only direct path between Icosium and the King my father's camp," said Volux. "Oh, that's delightful! And how am I to get through to the King your father without fighting Jugurtha first?" "I can lead you around him in such a way that he'll never know," said Volux eagerly. "Truly I can, Lucius Cornelius! The King my father trusts me I beg that you will too!" He thought for a moment, and added, "However, I think it would be better if you left your men here. We stand a much better chance if our party is very small." "Why should I trust you, Prince Volux?" Sulla asked. "I don't know you. For that matter, I don't really know Prince Bogud or the King your father, either! You might have decided to go back on your word and betray me to Jugurtha I'm quite a prize! My capture would be a grave embarrassment for Gaius Marius, as you well know." Bogud had said nothing, only looked grimmer and grimmer, but the young Volux was not about to give up. "Then give me a task which will prove to you that I and the King my father are trustworthy!" he cried. Sulla thought about that, smiling wolfishly. "All right," he said with sudden decision. "You've got me by the balls anyway, so what have I got to lose?" And he stared at the Moor, his strange light eyes dancing like two fine jewels under the brim of his wide straw hat an odd piece of headgear for a Roman soldier, but one famous these days clear from Tingis to Cyrenaica, anywhere the deeds of the Romans were told over by campfires and hearths: the albino Roman hero in his hat. I must trust to my luck, he was thinking to himself, for I feel nothing inside me that warns me my luck will not hold. This is a test, a trial of my confidence in myself, a way of showing everyone from King Bocchus and his son to the man in Cirta that I am equal to no, superior to! anything Fortune can toss in my way. A man cannot find out what he's made of by running away. No, I go forward. I have the luck. For I have made my luck, and made it well. "As soon as darkness falls this night," he said to Volux, "you and I and a very small cavalry escort are going to ride for the King your father's camp. My own men will stay here, which means that if Jugurtha does discover a Roman presence, he'll naturally assume it is limited to Icosium, and that the King your father will be coming here to see us." "But there's no moon tonight!" said Volux, dismayed. "I know," said Sulla, smiling in his nastiest manner. "That is the test, Prince Volux. We will have the light of the stars, none other. And you are going to lead me straight through the middle of Jugurtha's camp." Bogud's eyes bulged. "That's insanity!" he gasped. Volux's eyes danced. "Now that's a real challenge," he said, and smiled with genuine pleasure. "Are you game?" Sulla asked. "Right through the middle of Jugurtha's camp in one side without the Watch seeing us or hearing us down the middle on the via praetoria without disturbing one sleeping man or one dozing horse and out the other side without the Watch seeing us or hearing us. You do that, Prince Volux, and I will know I can trust you! And in turn trust the King your father." "I'm game," said Volux. "You're both mad," said Bogud.
Sulla decided to leave Bogud behind in Icosium, not sure that this member of the Moorish royal family was to be trusted. His detention was courteous enough, but he had been left in the charge of two military tribunes who were under orders not to let him out of their sight. Volux found the four best and surest-footed horses in Icosium, and Sulla produced his mule, still of the opinion that a mule was a better beast by far than any horse. He also packed his hat. The party had been fixed at Sulla, Volux, and three Moorish nobles, so all save Sulla were used to riding without saddles or bridles. "Nothing metal to jingle and betray us," said Volux. However, Sulla elected to saddle his mule, and put a rope halter around nose and ears. "They may creak, but if I fall, I'll make a lot more noise," he said. And at full darkness the five of them rode out into the stunning blackness of a moonless night. But the sky glowed with light, for no wind had come up to stir the African dust into the air; what at first glance seemed misty straggling clouds were actually vast conglomerations of stars, and the riders had no difficulty in seeing. All the animals were unshod, and pattered rather than clattered over the stony track which traversed a series of ravines in the range of hills around Icosium Bay. "We'll have to trust to our luck that none of our mounts goes lame," said Volux after his horse stumbled, righted itself. "You may trust to my luck at least," said Sulla. "Don't talk," said one of the three escorts. "On windless nights like this, your voices can be heard for miles." Thence they rode in silence, the remarkable devices of their eyes adjusted to pick up the smallest particle of light, the miles going by. So when the orange glow of dying campfires from the little basin where Jugurtha lay began to appear over the crest before them, they knew where they were. And when they looked down upon the basin, it seemed as brilliant as a city, its layout manifest. Down from their mounts slid the five; Volux put Sulla aside, and set to work. Waiting patiently, Sulla watched as the Moors proceeded to fit specially adapted hippo shoes over every hoof; normally these had wooden soles and were used on loose ground to keep the tender underside of the hoof around the frog clear of stones, but Volux's hippo shoes had been soled with thick felt. They were held on with two supple leather straps fixed to their fronts; these crossed over, looped under a hinged metal hook at the back, and were brought forward again to buckle over the front of the hoof. Everyone rode his mount around for a while to get it used to the hippo shoes, then Volux headed off on the last half mile between them and Jugurtha's camp. Presumably there were sentries and a mounted patrol, but the five riders saw no one wakeful, no one moving. Roman trained, naturally Jugurtha had based the construction of his camp upon the Roman pattern, but an aspect of foreigners which fascinated Gaius Marius, Sulla knew had not been able to summon up the patience or the willingness to reproduce the original properly. Thus Jugurtha, well aware Marius and his army were in Cirta and Bocchus not strong enough to attempt aggression, had not bothered to entrench himself; he had merely raised a low earthen wall so easy to ride a horse up and over that Sulla suspected it was more to keep animals in than humans out. But had Jugurtha been a Roman, rather than Roman trained, his camp would have had its full complement of trenches, stakes, palisades, and walls no matter how safe he felt himself. The five riders came to the earthen wall some two hundred paces east of the main gate, which was really just a wide gap, and urged their mounts up and over it easily. On the inside, each rider turned his steed abruptly to walk parallel with the wall and hugging it; in the freshly dug soil, not a sound did they make as they headed for the main gate. Here they could discern guards, but the men faced outward and were far enough in front of the gap not to hear the five riders wheel onto the broad avenue running down the center of the camp, from the front gate to the back gate. Sulla and Volux and the three Moorish nobles rode all the way down the half-mile-long via praetoria at a walk, turned off it to hug the inside of the wall when they reached its far end, and then crossed to the outside of the camp and freedom as soon as they judged themselves far enough away from the back gate guard. A mile further on, they removed the hippo shoes. "We did it!" whispered Volux fiercely, teeth flashing at Sulla in a triumphant grin. "Do you trust me now, Lucius Cornelius?'' "I trust you, Prince Volux," said Sulla, grinning back. They rode on at a pace between a walk and a trot, careful not to lame or exhaust their unshod beasts, and shortly after dawn found a Berber camp. The four tired horses Volux offered to trade for fresh ones were superior to any the Berbers owned, and the mule was a bit of a novelty, so five horses were forthcoming, and the ride continued remorselessly through the day. Since he had brought along his shady hat, Sulla hid beneath its brim and sweated. Just after dark they reached the camp of King Bocchus, not unlike Jugurtha's in construction, but bigger. And here Sulla balked, reining in on his awkward halter well out of sentry distance. "It isn't lack of trust, Prince Volux," he said, "it's more a pricking of my fingers. You're the King's son. You can ride in and out any time of day or night without question. Where I am obviously a foreign stranger, an unknown quantity. So I'm going to lie down here in as much comfort as I can manage, and wait until you see your father, make sure all is well, and return to fetch me." "I wouldn't lie down," said Volux. "Why?" "Scorpions." The hair stood up on Sulla's neck, he had to discipline himself not to leap instinctively; since Italy was free of all venomous insects, not a Roman or an Italian lived who did not abominate spiders and scorpions. Silently he drew breath, ignoring the beads of cold sweat on his brow, and turned a disinterested starlit face to Volux. "Well, I'm certainly not going to stand up for however many hours it's going to take for you to return, and I am not climbing back up on that animal," he said, "so I'll take my chances with the scorpions." "Suit yourself," said Volux, who already admired Sulla to the point of hero worship, and now brimmed over with awe. Sulla lay down amid a patch of soft and sandy earth, dug a hollow for his hip, shaped a mound for the back of his neck, said a mental prayer and promised an offering to Fortune to keep the scorpions away, closed his eyes, and fell instantly asleep. When Volux came back four hours later he found Sulla thus, and could have killed him. But Fortune belonged to Sulla in those days; Volux was a genuine friend. The night was cold; Sulla hurt everywhere. "Oh, this creeping around like a spy is a younger man's profession!" he said, extending a hand to Volux for help in getting to his feet. Then he discerned a shadowy form behind Volux, and stiffened. "It's all right, Lucius Cornelius, this is a friend of the King my father's. His name is Dabar," said Volux quickly. "Another cousin of the King your father, I presume?" "Actually no. Dabar is a cousin of Jugurtha's, and like Jugurtha, he's the bastard of a Berber woman. That's how he came to throw in his lot with us Jugurtha prefers to be the only royal bastard at his court." A flask of rich sweet unwatered wine was passed over; Sulla drained it without pausing to breathe, and felt the pain lessen, the cold vanish in a huge glow. Honey cakes followed, a piece of highly spiced kid's meat, and another flask of the same wine, which seemed at that moment the best Sulla had ever tasted in all his life. "Oh, I feel better!" he said, flexing his muscles and stretching enormously. "What's the news?" "Your pricking fingers cautioned you well, Lucius Cornelius," said Volux. "Jugurtha got to my father first." "Am I betrayed?" "No, no! But the situation has changed nonetheless. I will leave it to Dabar to explain, he was there." Dabar squatted down on his haunches to join Sulla. "It seems Jugurtha heard of a deputation from Gaius Marius to my king," he said, low-voiced. "Of course he assumed that was why my king had not gone back to Tingis, so he decided to be close by, putting himself between my king and any embassage from Gaius Marius by road or by sea. And he sent one of his greatest barons, Aspar, to sit by my king's right hand and listen to all congress between my king and the expected Romans." "I see," said Sulla. "What's to do, then?" "Tomorrow Prince Volux will escort you into my king's presence as if you have ridden together from Icosium Aspar did not see the prince come in tonight, fortunately. You will speak to my king as if you had come from Gaius Marius at the order of Gaius Marius, rather than at my king's behest. You will ask my king to abandon Jugurtha, and my king will refuse, but in a prevaricating way. He will order you to camp nearby for ten days while he thinks about what you have said. You will go to that camp and wait. However, my king will come to see you privately tomorrow night at a different place, and then you can talk together without fear." Dabar looked at Sulla keenly. "Is that satisfactory, Lucius Cornelius?" "Entirely," said Sulla, yawning mightily. "The only problem is, where can I stay tonight, and where can I find a bath? I stink of horse, and there are things crawling in my crotch." "Volux has had a comfortable camp pitched for you not far away," said Dabar. "Then lead me to it," said Sulla, getting to his feet. The next day Sulla went through his farcical interview with Bocchus. It wasn't difficult to tell which one of the nobles present was Jugurtha's spy, Aspar; he stood on the left of Bocchus's majestic chair far more majestic than its occupant and nobody ventured near him nor looked at him with the ease of long familiarity. "What am I to do, Lucius Cornelius?" wailed Bocchus that night after dark, meeting Sulla undetected at a distance from both his camp and Sulla's. "A favor for Rome," said Sulla. "Just tell me what favor Rome wants, and it shall be done! Gold jewels land soldiers cavalry wheat only name it, Lucius Cornelius! You're a Roman, you must know what the Senate's cryptic message means! For I swear I do not!" Bocchus quivered in fear. "Every commodity you have named, Rome can find without being cryptic, King Bocchus," said Sulla scornfully. "Then what! Only tell me what!" pleaded Bocchus. "I think you must already have worked it out for yourself, King Bocchus. But you won't admit that," said Sulla. "I can understand why. Jugurtha! Rome wants you to hand Jugurtha over to Rome peacefully, bloodlessly. Too much blood has already been shed in Africa, too much land torn up, too many towns and villages burned, too much wealth frittered away. But while ever Jugurtha continues at large, this terrible waste will go on. Crippling Numidia, inconveniencing Rome and crippling Mauretania too. So give me Jugurtha, King Bocchus!" "You ask me to betray my son-in-law, the father of my grandchildren, my kinsman through Masinissa's blood?" "I do indeed," said Sulla. Bocchus began to weep. "I cannot! Lucius Cornelius, I cannot! We are Berber as well as Punic, the law of the tented people binds us both. Anything, Lucius Cornelius, I will do anything to earn that treaty! Anything, that is, except betray my daughter's husband." "Anything else is unacceptable," said Sulla coldly. "My people would never forgive me!" "Rome will never forgive you. And that is worse." "I cannot!" Bocchus wept, genuine tears wetting his face, glistening amid the strands of his elaborately curled beard. "Please, Lucius Cornelius, please! I cannot!" Sulla turned his back contemptuously. "Then there will never be a treaty," he said. And each day for the next eight days the farce continued, Aspar and Dabar riding back and forth between Sulla's pleasant little camp and the King's pavilion, bearing messages which bore no relation to the real issue. That remained a secret between Sulla and Bocchus, and was discussed only in the nights. However, it was plain Volux knew of the real issue, Sulla decided, for Volux now avoided him as much as possible, and whenever he did see him looked angry, hurt, baffled. Sulla was enjoying himself, discovering that he liked the sensation of power and majesty being Rome's envoy gave him; and more than that, enjoyed being the relentless drip of water that wore down this so-called royal stone. He, who was no king, yet had dominion over kings. He, a Roman, had the real power. And it was heady, enormously satisfying. On the eighth night, Bocchus summoned Sulla to the secret meeting place. "All right, Lucius Cornelius, I agree," said the King, his eyes red from weeping. "Excellent!" said Sulla briskly. "But how can it be done?" "Simple," said Sulla. "You send Aspar to Jugurtha and offer to betray me to him." , "He won't believe me," said Bocchus desolately. "Certainly he will! Take my word for it, he will. If the circumstances were different, it's precisely what you might be doing, King." "But you're only a quaestor!" Sulla laughed. "What, are you trying to say that you do not think a Roman quaestor is as valuable as a Numidian king?" "No! No, of course not!" "Let me explain, King Bocchus," said Sulla gently. "I am a Roman quaestor, and it is true that all the title signifies in Rome is the lowest man on the senatorial ladder. However, I am also a patrician Cornelius my family is the family of Scipio Africanus and Scipio Aemilianus, and my bloodline is far older, far nobler than either yours or Jugurtha's. If Rome was ruled by kings, those kings would probably be members of the Cornelian family. And last but by no means least I happen to be Gaius Marius's brother-in-law. Our children are first cousins. Does that make it more understandable?" "Jugurtha does Jugurtha know all this?" whispered the King of Mauretania. "There's very little escapes Jugurtha," Sulla said, and sat back, and waited. "Very well, Lucius Cornelius, it shall be as you say. I will send Aspar to Jugurtha and offer to betray you." The King drew himself up, dignity a little threadbare. "However, you must tell me exactly how I am to go about it." Sulla leaned forward and spoke crisply. "You will ask for Jugurtha to come here the night after next, and promise him that you will hand over to him the Roman quaestor Lucius Cornelius Sulla. You will inform him that this quaestor is alone in your camp, endeavoring to persuade you to ally yourself with Gaius Marius. He knows it to be true, because Aspar has been reporting to him. He also knows there are no Roman soldiers within a hundred miles, so he won't bother to bring his army with him. And he thinks he knows you, King Bocchus. So he won't dream that it is he who will be yielded up rather than me." Sulla pretended not to see Bocchus wince. "It's not you or your army Jugurtha is afraid of. He's only afraid of Gaius Marius. Rest assured, he'll come, and he'll come believing every word Aspar tells him." "But what will I do when Jugurtha never returns to his own camp?" asked Bocchus, shivering anew. Sulla smiled a nasty smile. "I strongly recommend, King Bocchus, that the moment you have turned Jugurtha over to me, you strike camp and march for Tingis as fast as you can." "But won't you need my army to keep Jugurtha prisoner?" The King stared at Sulla, palpitating; never was a man more patently terrified. "You have no men to help you take him to Icosium! And his camp is there in between." "All I want is a good set of manacles and chains, and six of your fastest horses," said Sulla.
* * *
Sulla found himself looking forward to the confrontation, and did not experience one twinge of self-doubt or trepidation. Yes, it would be his name linked to the capture of Jugurtha forever! Little matter that he acted under Gaius Marius's orders; it was his valor and intelligence and initiative which effected the deed, and that could not be taken away from him. Not that he thought Gaius Marius would try to take the credit. Gaius Marius wasn't greedy for glory, he knew he had more than his fair share. And he would not oppose the leaking of the story of Jugurtha's capture. For a patrician, the kind of personal fame necessary to ensure election as consul was hampered by the fact that a patrician could not be a tribune of the plebs. Therefore a patrician had to find other ways of earning approbation, making sure the electorate knew he was a worthy scion of his family. Jugurtha had cost Rome dearly. And all of Rome would know that it was Lucius Cornelius Sulla, indefatigable quaestor, who had single-handedly achieved the capture of Jugurtha. So when he joined Bocchus to go to the appointed place, he was confident, exhilarated, eager to get it done. "Jugurtha isn't going to expect to see you in chains," said Bocchus. "He's under the impression that you've asked to see him, with the intention of persuading him to surrender. And he has instructed me to bring sufficient men to make you captive, Lucius Cornelius." "Good," said Sulla shortly. When Bocchus rode in with Sulla beside him and a strong troop of Moorish cavalry at his back, Jugurtha was waiting, escorted only by a handful of his barons, including Aspar. Pricking his mount, Sulla forged ahead of Bocchus and trotted straight to Jugurtha, then slid to the ground and held out his hand in the universal gesture of peace and friendship. "King Jugurtha," he said, and waited. Jugurtha looked down at the hand, then dismounted to take hold of it. "Lucius Cornelius." While this was going on, the Moorish cavalry had silently formed a ring around the central participants, and while Sulla and Jugurtha stood with hands joined, the capture of Jugurtha was effected as neatly and smoothly as even Gaius Marius could have wished. The Numidian barons were overcome without a sword being drawn; Jugurtha was taken too firmly to struggle, and borne to the ground. When he was set upon his feet again, he wore heavy manacles on both wrists and ankles, all connected to chains just long enough to permit that he shuffle along bowed over in a crouch. His eyes, Sulla noted in the torchlight, were very pale in so dark a man; he was big too, and well preserved. But his years sat heavily upon his beaky face, so he looked much older than Gaius Marius. Sulla knew he could manage to get him as far as he had to without an escort. "Put him up on the big bay," he instructed Bocchus's men, and stood watching closely as the chains were snapped to special loops on the modified saddle. Then he checked the girth and the locks. After that he accepted a hoist up onto another bay, and took the bridle of Jugurtha's horse, and secured it to his own saddle; if Jugurtha took it into his head to kick his mount into bolting, it would have no leeway, nor could the reins be wrested from Sulla. The four spare mounts were tethered together and tied by a fairly short line to Jugurtha's saddle. He was now doubly handicapped. And finally, to make absolutely sure, another length of chain was snapped to Jugurtha's right wrist's manacle, and its other end was fastened to a manacle on Sulla's own left wrist. Sulla had said not a word to the Moors from the time Jugurtha was taken; now, still silent, he kicked his horse and rode off, Jugurtha's horse following docilely enough as the reins and the chain linking him to Sulla drew taut. The four spare horses followed. And in very few moments all the mounts had disappeared into the shadows between the trees. Bocchus wept. Volux and Dabar watched helplessly. "Father, let me catch him!" pleaded Volux suddenly. "He can't travel fast so trammeled I can catch him!" "It is too late." Taking the fine handkerchief his servant gave him, King Bocchus dried his eyes and blew his nose. "He will never let himself be caught, that one. We are as helpless babes compared to Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who is a Roman. No, my son, poor Jugurtha's fate is out of our hands. We have Mauretania to think of. It's time to go home to our beloved Tingis. Perhaps we don't belong in the world of the Middle Sea."
For perhaps a mile Sulla rode without speaking or letting his pace slacken. All his jubilance, his fantastic pleasure in his own brilliance, he kept as tightly reined as he did his prisoner, Jugurtha. Yes, if he did the dissemination properly, and without detracting from the achievements of Gaius Marius, the story of his capture of Jugurtha would join those other wonderful stories mothers told their children the leap of young Marcus Curtius into the chasm in the Forum Romanum, the heroism of Horatius Cocles when he held the Wooden Bridge against Lars Porsenna of Clusium, the drawing of the circle around the King of Syria's feet by Gaius Popillius Laenas, the killing of his treasonous sons by Lucius Junius Brutus, the killing of Spurius Maelius the would-be King of Rome by Gaius Servilius Ahala yes, the capture of Jugurtha by Lucius Cornelius Sulla would join all those and many more bedtime stories, for it had all the necessary elements, including the ride through the middle of Jugurtha's camp. But he was not by nature a romancer, a dreamer, a builder of fantasies, so he found it easy to abandon these thoughts when it came time to halt, to dismount. Keeping well clear of Jugurtha, he went to the lead holding the four spare horses, and cut it, then sent the animals careering in all directions with a shower of well-placed stones. "I see," said Jugurtha, watching Sulla scramble astride his bay by grabbing at its mane. “We have to ride a hundred miles on the same horses, eh? I was wondering how you were going to manage to transfer me from one beast to another." He laughed jeeringly. "My cavalry will catch you, Lucius Cornelius!" "Hopefully not," said Sulla, and jerked his prisoner's mount forward. Instead of proceeding due north to the sea, he headed due east across a small plain, and rode for ten miles through the breathless night of early summer, his way lit up by a sliver of moon in the west. Then in the far distance reared a range of mountains, solidly black; in front of it and much closer was a huddle of gigantic round rocks piled in jumbled heaps, looming above the sparse and stunted trees. "Right where it ought to be!" Sulla exclaimed joyously, and whistled shrilly. His own Ligurian cavalry squadron spilled out of the shelter afforded by the boulders, each man encumbered by two spare mounts; silently they rode to meet Sulla and his prisoner, and produced two extra horses. And two mules. "I sent them here to wait for me six days ago, King Jugurtha," Sulla said. "King Bocchus thought I came to his camp alone, but as you see, I didn't. I had Publius Vagiennius following close behind me, and sent him back to bring up his troop to wait for me here." Freed from his encumbrances, Sulla supervised the remounting of Jugurtha, who now was chained to Publius Vagiennius. And soon they were riding away, bearing northeast to skirt Jugurtha's camp by many miles. "I don't suppose, your royal Majesty," said Publius Vagiennius with delicate diffidence, "that you would be able to tell me whereabouts I'd find snails around Cirta? Or around anywhere else in Numidia, for that matter?"
By the end of June the war in Africa was over. For a little while Jugurtha was housed in appropriately comfortable quarters within Utica, as Marius and Sulla tidied up. And there his two sons, Iampsas and Oxyntas, were brought to keep him company while his court disintegrated and the scrabbling for places of influence under the new regime began. King Bocchus got his treaty of friendship and alliance from the Senate, and Prince Gauda the invalid became King Gauda of a considerably reduced Numidia. It was Bocchus who reaped the extra territory from a Rome too busy elsewhere to expand her African province by many hundreds of miles. And as soon as a small fleet of good ships and stable weather ensured a smooth passage, Marius loaded King Jugurtha and his sons on board one of these hired vessels, and sent them to Rome for safekeeping. The Numidian threat vanished over the horizon with the passing of Jugurtha. With them sailed Quintus Sertorius, determined that he was going to see action against the Germans in Gaul-across-the-Alps. He had applied to his cousin Marius for permission to leave. "I am a fighting man, Gaius Marius," said the grave young contubernalis, "and the fighting here is finished. Recommend me to your friend Publius Rutilius Rufus, and let him give me duty in Further Gaul!" "Go with my thanks and blessings, Quintus Sertorius," said Marius with rare affection. "And give my regards to your mother." Sertorius's face lit up. "I will, Gaius Marius!" "Remember, young Sertorius," said Marius on the day that Quintus Sertorius and Jugurtha sailed for Italy, "that I will need you again in the future. So guard yourself in battle if you're fortunate enough to find one. Rome has honored your bravery and skill with the Gold Crown, with phalerae and torcs and bracelets all of gold. A rare distinction for one so young. But don't be rash. Rome is going to need you alive, not dead." "I'll stay alive, Gaius Marius," Quintus Sertorius promised. "And don't go off to your war quite the moment you arrive in Italy," Marius admonished. "Spend some time with your dear mother first." "I will, Gaius Marius," Quintus Sertorius promised. When the lad took his leave, Sulla looked at his superior ironically. "He makes you as clucky as an old hen sitting on one lone egg." Marius snorted. "Rubbish! He's my cousin on his mother's side, and I'm fond of her." "Certainly," said Sulla, grinning. Marius laughed. "Come now, Lucius Cornelius, admit that you're as fond of young Sertorius as I am!" "I admit it freely. Nonetheless, Gaius Marius, he does not make me clucky!" "Mentulam caco!" said Marius. And that was the end of the subject.
2
Rutilia, who was the only sister of Publius Rutilius Rufus, enjoyed the unusual distinction of being married to each of two brothers. Her first husband had been Lucius Aurelius Cotta, colleague in the consulship with Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus some fourteen years earlier; it was the same year Gaius Marius had been tribune of the plebs, and defied Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus. Rutilia had gone to Lucius Aurelius Cotta as a girl, whereas he had been married before, and already had a nine-year-old son named Lucius, like himself. They were married the year after Fregellae was leveled to the ground for rebelling against Rome, and in the year of Gaius Gracchus's first term as a tribune of the plebs, they had a daughter named Aurelia. Lucius Cotta's son was then ten years old, and very pleased to have acquired a little half sister, for he liked his stepmother, Rutilia, very much. When Aurelia turned five years old, her father, Lucius Aurelius Cotta, died suddenly, only days after the end of his consulship. The widow Rutilia, twenty-four years old, clung for comfort to Lucius Cotta's younger brother, Marcus, who had not yet found a wife. Love grew between them, and with her father's and her brother's permission, Rutilia married her brother-in-law, Marcus Aurelius Cotta, eleven months after the death of Lucius Cotta. With her into Marcus's care, Rutilia brought her stepson and Marcus's nephew, Lucius Junior, and her daughter and Marcus's niece, Aurelia. The family promptly grew: Rutilia bore Marcus a son, Gaius, less than a year later, then another son, Marcus Junior, the year after that, and finally a third son, Lucius, seven years later. Aurelia remained the only girl her mother bore, fascinatingly situated; by her father, she had a half brother older than herself, and by her mother, she had three half brothers younger than herself who also happened to be her first cousins because her father had been their uncle, where their father was her uncle. It could prove very, very bewildering to those not in the know, especially if the children explained it. "She's my cousin," Gaius Cotta would say, pointing to Aurelia. "He's my brother," Aurelia would riposte, pointing to Gaius Cotta. "He's my brother," Gaius Cotta would then say, pointing to Marcus Cotta. "She's my sister," Marcus Cotta would say in his turn, pointing to Aurelia. "He's my cousin," Aurelia would say last of all, pointing to Marcus Cotta. They could keep it up for hours; little wonder most people never worked it out. Not that the complex blood links worried any of that strong-minded, self-willed cluster of children, who liked each other as well as loved each other, and all basked in a warm relationship with Rutilia and her second Aurelius Cotta husband, who also happened to adore each other. The family Aurelius was one of the Famous Families, and its branch Aurelius Cotta was respectably elderly in its tenure of the Senate, though new to the nobility bestowed by the consulship. Rich because of shrewd investments, huge inheritances of land, and many clever marriages, the Aurelius Cottas could afford to have multiple sons without worrying about adopting some of them out, and to dower the daughters more than adequately. The brood which lived under the roof of Marcus Aurelius Cotta and his wife, Rutilia, was therefore financially very eligible marriage material, but also possessed great good looks. And Aurelia, the only girl, was the best-looking of them all. "Flawless!" was the opinion of the luxury-loving yet restlessly brilliant Lucius Licinius Crassus Orator, who was one of the most ardent and important suitors for her hand. "Glorious!" was the way Quintus Mucius Scaevola best friend of and first cousin of Crassus Orator put it; he too had entered his name on the list of suitors. "Unnerving!" was Marcus Livius Drusus's comment; he was Aurelia's cousin, and very anxious to marry her. "Helen of Troy!" was how Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus Junior described her, suing for her hand. Indeed, the situation was exactly as Publius Rutilius Rufus had described it to Gaius Marius in his letter; everyone in Rome wanted to marry his niece Aurelia. That quite a few of the applicants had wives already neither disqualified nor dishonored them divorce was easy, and Aurelia's dowry was so large a man didn't need to worry about losing the dowry of an earlier wife. "I really do feel like King Tyndareus when every important prince and king came to sue for Helen's hand," Marcus Aurelius Cotta said to Rutilia. "He had Odysseus to solve his dilemma," Rutilia commented. "Well, I wish I did! No matter whom I give her to, I'm going to offend everyone who doesn't get her." "Just like Tyndareus," nodded Rutilia. And then Marcus Cotta's Odysseus came to dinner, though properly he was Ulysses, being a Roman of the Romans, Publius Rutilius Rufus. After the children including Aurelia had gone to bed, the conversation turned as always to the subject of Aurelia's marriage. Rutilius Rufus listened with interest, and when the moment came, offered his answer; what he didn't tell his sister and brother-in-law was that the real unraveler of the conundrum was Gaius Marius, whose terse letter he had just received from Africa. "It's simple, Marcus Aurelius," he said. "If it is, then I'm too close to see," said Marcus Cotta. "Enlighten me, Ulysses!" Rutilius Rufus smiled. "No, I can't see the point of making a song and dance about it, the way Ulysses did," he said. "This is modern Rome, not ancient Greece. We can't slaughter a horse, cut it up into four pieces, and make all Aurelia's suitors stand on it to swear an oath of fealty to you, Marcus Aurelius." "Especially not before they know who the lucky winner is!" said Cotta, laughing. "What romantics those old Greeks were! No, Publius Rutilius, I fear what we have to deal with is a collection of litigious-minded, hairsplitting Romans." "Pre-cisely," said Rutilius Rufus. "Come, brother, put us out of our misery and tell us," urged Rutilia. "As I said, my dear Rutilia, simple. Let the girl pick her own husband." Cotta and his wife stared. "Do you really think that's wise?" asked Cotta. "In this situation, wisdom fails, so what have you got to lose?" asked Rutilius Rufus. "You don't need her to marry a rich man, and there aren't any notorious fortune hunters on your list of suitors, so limit her choice to your list. Nor are the Aurelians, the Julians, or the Cornelians likely to attract social climbers. Besides which, Aurelia is full of common sense, not a scrap sentimental, and certainly not a romantic. She won't let you down, not my girl!" "You're right," said Cotta, nodding. "I don't think there's a man alive could turn Aurelia's head." So the next day Cotta and Rutilia summoned Aurelia to her mother's sitting room, with the intention of telling her what had been decided about her future. She walked in; she didn't drift, undulate, stride, mince. Aurelia was a good plain walker, moved briskly and competently, disciplined hips and bottom to a neat economy, kept shoulders back, chin tucked in, head up. Perhaps her figure erred on the spare side, for she was tall and inclined to be flat-chested, but she wore her draperies with immaculate neatness, did not affect high cork heels, and scorned jewelry. Thick and straight, her palest-icy-brown hair was dragged severely back into a tight bun positioned right where it could not be seen from the front full face, giving her no softening frame of hair. Cosmetics had never sullied her dense and milky skin, without a blemish, faintly pinked across her incredible cheekbones and deepening to a soft rose within the hollows below. As straight and high-bridged as if Praxiteles had chiseled it, her nose was too long to incur animadversions about Celtic blood, and therefore could be forgiven its lack of character in other words, its lack of truly Roman humps and bumps. Lushly crimsoned, deliciously creased at its corners, her mouth had that folded quality which drove men mad to kiss it into blooming. And in all this wonderful heart-shaped face, with its dented chin and its broad high forehead and its widow's peak, there dwelled an enormous pair of eyes everyone insisted were not dark blue, but purple, framed in long and thick black lashes, and surmounted by thin, arched, feathery black brows. Many were the debates at men's dinner parties (for it could confidently be predicted that among the guests would be two or three of her gazetted suitors) as to what exactly constituted Aurelia's appeal. Some said it all lay in those thoughtful, detached purple eyes; some insisted it was the remarkable purity of her skin; others plumped for the carved starkness of her facial planes; a few muttered passionately about her mouth, or her dented chin, or her exquisite hands and feet. "It's none of those things and yet it's all of those things," growled Lucius Licinius Crassus Orator. "Fools! She's a Vestal Virgin on the loose she's Diana, not Venus! Unattainable. And therein lies her fascination," "No, it's those purple eyes," said Scaurus Princeps Senatus's young son, another Marcus like his father. "Purple is the color! Noble! She's a living, breathing omen." But when the living, breathing omen walked into her mother's sitting room looking as sedate and immaculate as always, there entered no atmosphere of high drama with her; indeed, the character of Aurelia did not encourage high drama. "Sit down, daughter," said Rutilia, smiling. Aurelia sat and folded her hands in her lap. "We want to talk to you about your marriage," said Cotta, and cleared his throat, hoping she would say something to help him elucidate. He got no help at all; Aurelia just looked at him with a kind of remote interest, nothing more. "How do you feel about it?" Rutilia asked. Aurelia pursed her lips, shrugged. "I suppose I just hope you'll pick someone I like," she said. "Well, yes, we hope that too," said Cotta. "Who don't you like?" asked Rutilia. "Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus Junior," Aurelia said without any hesitation, giving him his whole name. Cotta saw the justice of that. "Anyone else?" he asked. "Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Junior." "Oh, that's too bad!" cried Rutilia. "I think he's very nice, I really do." "I agree, he's very nice," said Aurelia, "but he's timid." Cotta didn't even try to conceal his grin. "Wouldn't you like a timid husband, Aurelia? You could rule the roost!" "A good Roman wife does not rule the roost." "So much for Scaurus. Our Aurelia has spoken." Cotta waggled head and shoulders back and forth. "Anyone else you don't fancy?" "Lucius Licinius." "What's the matter with him?" "He's fat." The pursed mouth pursed tighter. "Unappealing, eh?" "It indicates a lack of self-discipline, Father." There were times when Aurelia called Cotta Father, other times when he was Uncle, but her choice was never illogical; when their discourse revealed that he was acting in a paternal role, he was Father, and when he was acting in an avuncular role, he was Uncle. "You're right, it does," said Cotta. "Is there anyone you would prefer to marry above all the others?" asked Rutilia, trying the opposite tack. The pursed mouth relaxed. "No, Mother, not really. I'm quite happy to leave the decision to you and Father." "What do you hope for in marriage?" asked Cotta. "A husband befitting my rank who adores his ... several fine children." "A textbook answer!" said Cotta. "Go to the top of the class, Aurelia." Rutilia glanced at her husband, only the faintest shadow of amusement in her eyes. "Tell her, Marcus Aurelius, do!" Cotta cleared his throat again. "Well, Aurelia, you're causing us a bit of a problem," he said. "At last count I have had thirty-seven formal applications for your hand in marriage. Not one of these hopeful suitors can be dismissed as ineligible. Some of them are of rank far higher than ours, some of fortune far greater than ours and some even have rank and fortune far in excess of ours! Which puts us in a quandary. If we choose your husband, we are going to make a lot of enemies, which may not worry us unduly, but will make life hard for your brothers later on. I'm sure you can see that." "I do, Father," said Aurelia seriously. "Anyway, your Uncle Publius came up with the only feasible answer. You will choose your husband, my daughter." And for once she was thrown off-balance. She gaped. "I?" "You." Her hands went up to press at her reddened cheeks; she stared at Cotta in horror. "But I can't do that!" she cried. "It isn't it isn't Roman!" "I agree," said Cotta. "Not Roman. Rutilian." "We needed a Ulysses to tell us the way, and luckily we have one right in the family," said Rutilia. "Oh!" Aurelia wriggled, twisted. "Oh, oh!" "What is it, Aurelia? Can't you see your way clear to a decision?" asked Rutilia. "No, it's not that," said Aurelia, her color fading to normal, then fading beyond it, and leaving her white-faced. "It's just oh, well!" She shrugged, got up. "May I go?" "Indeed you may." At the door she turned to regard Cotta and Rutilia very gravely. "How long do I have to make up my mind?" she asked. "Oh, there's no real hurry," said Cotta easily. "You're eighteen at the end of January, but there's nothing to say you have to marry, the moment you come of age. Take your time." "Thank you," she said, and went out of the room. Her own little room was one of the cubicles which opened off the atrium, and so was windowless and dark; in such a careful and caring family bosom, the only daughter would not have been permitted to sleep anywhere less protected. However, being the only daughter amid such a collection of boys, she was also much indulged, and could easily have grown into a very spoiled young lady did she have the germ of such a flaw in her. Luckily she did not. The consensus of family opinion was that it was utterly impossible to spoil Aurelia, for she had not an avaricious or envious atom in her. Which didn't make her sweet-natured, or even lovable; in fact, it was a lot easier to admire and respect Aurelia than it was to love her, for she did not give of herself. As a child she would listen impassively to the vainglorious posturing of her older brother or one of her first two younger brothers, then when she had had enough, she would thump him across the ear so hard his head rang, and walk away without a word. Because as the only girl she needed, her parents felt, a domain of her own marked off-limits to all the boys, she had been given a modestly large and brilliantly sunny room off the peristyle-garden for her own, and a maidservant of her own, the Gallic girl Cardixa, who was a gem. When Aurelia married, Cardixa would go with her to her new husband's home.
One quick glance at Aurelia's face when she walked into her workroom told Cardixa that something of importance had just occurred; but she said nothing, nor did she expect to be told what it was, for the kind and comfortable relationship between mistress and maidservant contained no girlish confidences. Aurelia clearly needed to be alone, so Cardixa departed. The tastes of its owner were emblazoned on the room, most of the walls of which were solidly pigeonholed and held many rolls of books; a desk held scrolls of blank paper, reed pens, wax tablets, a quaint bone stylus for inscribing the wax, cakes of compressed sepia ink waiting to be dissolved in water, a covered inkwell, a full shaker of fine sand for blotting work in progress, and an abacus. In one corner was a full-sized Patavian loom, the walls behind it pegged to hold dozens of long hanks of woolen thread in a myriad of thicknesses and colors reds and purples, blues and greens, pinks and creams, yellows and oranges for Aurelia wove the fabric for all her clothes, and loved brilliant hues. On the loom was a wide expanse of misty-thin flame-colored textile woven from wool spun hair-fine; Aurelia's wedding veil, a real challenge. The saffron material for her wedding dress was already completed, and lay folded upon a shelf until the time came to make it up; it was unlucky to start cutting and sewing the dress until the groom was fully contractually committed. Having a talent for such work, Cardixa was halfway through making a carved fretwork folding screen out of some striking African cabinet-wood; the pieces of polished sard, jasper, carnelian, and onyx with which she intended to inlay it in a pattern of leaves and flowers were all carefully wrapped within a carved wooden box, an earlier example of her skill. Aurelia went along the room's exposed side closing the shutters, the grilles of which she left open to let in fresh air and a muted light; the very fact that the shutters were closed was signal enough that she did not wish to be disturbed by anyone, little brother or servant. Then she sat down at her desk, greatly troubled and bewildered, folded her hands on its top, and thought. What would Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi do? That was Aurelia's criterion for everything. What would Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi do? What would Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi think? How would Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi feel? For Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi was Aurelia's idol, her exemplar, her ready-reckoner of conduct in speech and deed. Among the books lining the walls of her workroom were all of Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi's published letters and essays, as well as any work by anyone else which so much as mentioned the name Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi. And who was she, this Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi? Everything a Roman noblewoman ought to be, from the moment of her birth to the moment of her death. That was who. The younger daughter of Scipio Africanus who rolled up Hannibal and conquered Carthage she had been married to the great nobleman Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus in her nineteenth year, which was his forty-fifth year; her mother, Aemilia Paulla, was the sister of the great Aemilius Paullus, which made Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi patrician on both sides. Her conduct while wife to Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus was unimpeachable, and patiently over the almost twenty years of their marriage, she bore him twelve children. Gaius Julius Caesar would probably have maintained that it was the endlessly intermarried bloodlines of two very old families Cornelius and Aemilius that rendered her babies sickly, for sickly they all were. But, indefatigable, she persisted, and cared for each child with scrupulous attention and great love; and actually succeeded in rearing three of them. The first child who lived to be grown up was a girl, Sempronia; the second was a boy, who inherited his father's name, Tiberius; and the third was another boy, Gaius Sempronius Gracchus. Exquisitely educated and a worthy child of her father, who adored everything Greek as the pinnacle of world culture, she herself tutored all three of her children (and those among the nine dead who lived long enough to need tutoring) and oversaw every aspect of their upbringing. When her husband died, she was left with the fifteen-year-old Sempronia, the twelve-year-old Tiberius Gracchus, and the two-year-old Gaius Gracchus, as well as several among the nine dead who had survived infancy. Everyone lined up to marry the widow, for she had proven her fertility with amazing regularity, and she was still fertile; she was also the daughter of Africanus, the niece of Paullus, and the relict of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus; and she was fabulously wealthy. Among her suitors was none other than King Ptolemy Euergetes Gross Belly at that moment in time, late King of Egypt, current King of Cyrenaica who was a regular visitor to Rome in the years between his deposition in Egypt and his reinstatement as its sole ruler nine years after the death of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus. He would turn up to bleat incessantly in the Senate's weary ear, and agitate and bribe to be let climb back upon the Egyptian throne. At the time of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus's death, King Ptolemy Euergetes Gross Belly was eight years younger than the thirty-six-year-old Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi and considerably thinner in his middle regions than he would be later, when Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi's first cousin and son-in-law, Scipio Aemilianus, boasted that he had made the indecently clad, hideously fat King of Egypt walk! He sued as persistently and incessantly for her hand in marriage as he did for reinstatement on the Egyptian throne, but with as little success. Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi could not be had by a mere foreign king, no matter how incredibly rich or powerful. In fact, Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi had resolved that a true Roman noblewoman married to a great Roman nobleman for nearly twenty years had no business remarrying at all. So suitor after suitor was refused with gracious courtesy; the widow struggled on alone to rear her children. When Tiberius Gracchus was murdered during his tribunate of the plebs, she carried on living with head unbowed, holding herself steadfastly aloof from all the innuendo about her first cousin Scipio Aemilianus's implication in the murder; and held herself just as steadfastly aloof from the marital hideousnesses which existed between Scipio Aemilianus and his wife, her own daughter, Sempronia. Then when Scipio Aemilianus was found mysteriously dead and it was rumored that he too had been murdered by his wife, no less, her own daughter still she held herself steadfastly aloof. After all, she was left with one living son to nurture and encourage in his blossoming public career, her dear Gaius Gracchus. Gaius Gracchus died with great violence about the time she turned seventy years of age, and everyone assumed that here at last was the blow strong enough to break Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi. But no. Head unbowed, she carried on living, widowed, minus her splendid sons, her only surviving child the embittered and barren Sempronia. "I have my dear little Sempronia to bring up," she said, referring to Gaius Gracchus's daughter, a tiny babe. But she did retire from Rome, though never from life or from the pursuit of it. She went to live permanently in her huge villa at Misenum, it no less than her a monument to everything of taste and refinement and splendor Rome could offer the world. There she collected her letters and essays and graciously permitted old Sosius of the Argiletum to publish them, after her friends beseeched her not to let them go unknown to posterity. Like their author, they were sprightly, full of grace and charm and wit, yet very strong and deep; in Misenum they were added to, for Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi never lost intellect or erudition or interest as she piled up the total of her years. When Aurelia was sixteen and Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi eighty-three, Marcus Aurelius Cotta and his wife, Rutilia, paid a duty call no duty call really, it was an event eagerly looked forward to upon Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi as they were passing through Misenum. With them they had the full tribe of children, even including the lofty Lucius Aurelius Cotta, who naturally at twenty-six did not consider himself a true member of the tribe. Everyone was issued orders to be quiet as mice, demure as Vestals, still as cats before the pounce no fidgeting, no jiggling, no kicking the chair legs under pain of death by indescribably agonizing torture. But Cotta and Rutilia needn't have bothered issuing threats foreign to their natures. Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi knew just about everything there was to know of little boys and big boys too, and her granddaughter, Sempronia, was a year younger than Aurelia. Delighted to be surrounded by such interesting and vivid children, she had a wonderful time, and for much longer than her household of devoted slaves thought wise, for she was frail by this time, and permanently blue about the lips and earlobes. And the girl Aurelia came away captured, inspired when she grew up, she vowed, she was going to live by the same standards of Roman strength, Roman endurance, Roman integrity, Roman patience, as Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi. It was after this that her library grew rich in the old lady's writings; then that the pattern of a life to be equally remarkable was laid down. The visit was never repeated, for the following winter Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi died, sitting up straight in a chair, head unbowed, holding her granddaughter's hand. She had just informed the girl of her formal betrothal to Marcus Fulvius Flaccus Bambalio, only survivor of that family of the Fulvius Flaccuses who had died supporting Gaius Gracchus; it was fitting, she told the young Sempronia, that as sole heiress to the vast Sempronian fortune, she should bring that fortune as her gift to a family stripped of its fortune in the cause of Gaius Gracchus. Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi was also pleased to be able to tell her granddaughter that she still possessed enough clout in the Senate to procure a decree waiving the provisions of the lex Voconia de mulierum hereditatibus, just in case some remote male cousin appeared and lodged a claim to the vast Sempronian fortune under this antiwoman law. The waiver, she added, extended to the next generation, just in case another woman should prove the only direct heir. The death of Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi happened so quickly, so mercifully, that the whole of Rome rejoiced; truly the gods had loved and sorely tried Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi! Being a Cornelian, she was inhumed rather than cremated; alone among the great and small families of Rome, the members of the gens Cornelius kept their bodies intact after death. A magnificent tomb on the Via Latina became her monument, and was never without offerings of fresh flowers laid all around it. And with the passing of the years it became both shrine and altar, though the cult was never officially recognized. A Roman woman in need of the qualities associated with Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi would pray to her, and leave her fresh flowers. She had become a goddess, but of a kind new to any pantheon; a figure of unconquerable spirit in the face of bitter suffering.
What would Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi do? For once Aurelia had no answer to that question; neither logic nor instinct could graft Aurelia's predicament onto one whose parents would never, never, never have given her the freedom to choose her own husband. Of course Aurelia could appreciate the reasons why her crafty Uncle Publius had suggested it; her own classical education was more than broad enough to appreciate the parallel between herself and Helen of Troy, though Aurelia did not think of herself as fatally beautiful more as irresistibly eligible. Finally she came to the only conclusion Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi would have approved; she must sift through her suitors with painstaking care, and choose the best one. That did not mean the one who attracted her most strongly. It meant the one who measured up to the Roman ideal. Therefore he must be wellborn, of a senatorial family at least and one whose dignitas, whose public worth and standing in Rome went down the generations since the founding of the Republic without slur or smear or scar; he must be brave, untempted by excesses of any kind, contemptuous of monetary greed, above bribery or ethical prostitution, and prepared if necessary to lay down his life for Rome or for his honor. A tall order! The trouble was, how could a girl of her sheltered background be sure she was judging aright? So she decided to talk to the three adult members of her immediate family to Marcus Cotta and to Rutilia and to her elder half brother, Lucius Aurelius Cotta and ask them for their candid opinions about each of the men on the list of suitors. The three applied to were taken aback, but they tried to help as best they could; unfortunately, each of them when pressed admitted to personal prejudices likely to warp judgment, so Aurelia ended up no better off. "There's no one she really fancies," said Cotta to his wife gloomily. "Not a solitary one!" said Rutilia, sighing. "It's unbelievable, Rutilia! An eighteen-year-old girl without a hankering for anyone! What's the matter with her?" "How should I know?" asked Rutilia, feeling unfairly put on the defensive. "She doesn't get it from my side of the family!" "Well, she certainly doesn't get it from mine!" snapped Cotta, then shook himself out of his exasperation, kissed his wife to make up, and slumped back into simple depression. "I would be willing to bet, you know, that she ends up deciding none of them are any good!" "I agree," said Rutilia. "What are we going to do, then? If we're not careful, we'll end up with the first voluntary spinster in the entire history of Rome!" "We'd better send her to see my brother," Rutilia said. "She can talk to him about it." Cotta brightened. "An excellent idea!" he said. The next day Aurelia walked from the Cotta mansion on the Palatine to Publius Rutilius Rufus's house on the Carinae, escorted by her maidservant, Cardixa, and two big Gallic slaves whose duties were many and varied, but all demanded plenty of physical strength; neither Cotta nor Rutilia had wanted to handicap the congress between Aurelia and her uncle with the presence of parents. An appointment had been made, for as consul kept to administer Rome thus freeing up Gnaeus Mallius Maximus to recruit the very large army he intended to take to Gaul-across-the-Alps in late spring Rutilius Rufus was a busy man. Never too busy, however, to deal with the few items of a family nature which came his way. Marcus Cotta had called to see his brother-in-law just before dawn, and explained the situation which seemed to amuse Rutilius Rufus mightily. "Oh, the little one!" he exclaimed, shoulders shaking. "A virgin through and through. Well, we'll have to make sure she doesn't make the wrong decision and remain a virgin for the rest of her life, no matter how many husbands and children she might have." "I hope you have a solution, Publius Rutilius," said Cotta. "I can't even see a tiny gleam of light." "I know what to do," said Rutilius Rufus smugly. "Send her over to me just before the tenth hour. She can have some dinner with me. I'll send her home in a litter under strong guard, never fear." When Aurelia arrived, Rutilius Rufus sent Cardixa and the two Gauls to his servants' quarters to eat dinner and wait upon his pleasure; Aurelia he conducted to his dining room, and saw her comfortably ensconced upon a straight chair where she could converse with equal ease with her uncle and whoever might recline to his left. "I'm only expecting one guest," he said, getting himself organized oft his couch. "Brrr! Chilly, isn't it? How about a nice warm pair of woolly socks, niece?" Any other eighteen-year-old female might have considered death a preferable fate to wearing something as un-glamorous as a nice warm pair of woolly socks, but not Aurelia, who judiciously weighed the ambient temperature of the room against her own state of being, then nodded. "Thank you, Uncle Publius," she said. Cardixa was summoned and bidden obtain the socks from the housekeeper, which she did with commendable promptness. "What a sensible girl you are!" said Rutilius Rufus, who really did adore Aurelia's common sense as any other man might adore the perfect ocean pearl he found inside a whiskery whelk on the Ostia mud flats. No great lover of women, he never paused to reflect that common sense was a commodity just as rare in men as in women; he simply looked for its lack in women and consequently found it. Thus was Aurelia, his miraculous ocean pearl, found on the mud flats of womankind, and greatly did he treasure her. "Thank you, Uncle Publius," said Aurelia, and gave her attention to Cardixa, who was kneeling to remove shoes. The two girls were engrossed in pulling on socks when the single guest was ushered in; neither of them bothered to look up at the sounds of greeting, the noises of the guest being settled to his host's left. As Aurelia straightened again, she looked into Cardixa's eyes and said, "Thank you," with one of her very rare smiles. So when she was fully upright and gazing across the table at her uncle and his guest, the smile still lingered, as did the additional flush bending down had imparted to her cheeks; she looked breathtaking. The guest's breath caught audibly. So did Aurelia's. "Gaius Julius, this is my sister's girl, Aurelia," said Publius Rutilius Rufus suavely. "Aurelia, I would like you to meet the son of my old friend Gaius Julius Caesar a Gaius like his father, but not the eldest son." Purple eyes even larger than usual, Aurelia looked at the shape of her fate, and never thought once of the Roman ideal, or Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi. Or perhaps on some deeper level she did; for indeed he measured up, though only time would prove it to her. At this moment of meeting, all she saw was his long Roman face with its long Roman nose, the bluest of eyes, thickly waving golden hair, beautiful mouth. And, after all that internal debate, all that careful yet fruitless deliberation, she solved her dilemma in the most natural and satisfying way possible. She fell in love. Of course they talked. In fact, they had a most enjoyable dinner. Rutilius Rufus leaned back on his left elbow and let them have the floor, tickled at his own cleverness in working out which young man among the hundreds he knew would be the one to appeal to his precious ocean pearl. It went without saying that he liked young Gaius Julius Caesar enormously, and expected good things of him in future years; he was the very finest type of Roman. But then, he came from the finest type of Roman family. And, being a Roman of the Romans himself, Publius Rutilius Rufus was particularly pleased that if the attraction between young Gaius Julius Caesar and his niece came to full flower as he confidently expected it would a quasi-familial bond would be forged between himself and his old friend Gaius Marius. The children of young Gaius Julius Caesar and his niece Aurelia would be the first cousins of the children of Gaius Marius. Normally too diffident to quiz anyone, Aurelia forgot all about manners, and quizzed young Gaius Julius Caesar to her heart's content. She found out that he had been in Africa with his brother-in-law Gaius Marius as a junior military tribune, and been decorated on several occasions a Corona Muralis for the battle at the Muluchath citadel, a banner after the first battle outside Cirta, nine silver phalerae after the second battle outside Cirta. He had sustained a severe wound in the upper leg during this second battle, and had been sent home, honorably discharged. None of this had she found easy to prise out of him, for he was more interested in telling her of the exploits of his elder brother, Sextus, in the same campaigns. This year, she found out, he was appointed a moneyer, one of three young men who in their presenatorial years were given an opportunity to learn something of how Rome's economy worked by being put in charge of the minting of Rome's coins. "Money disappears from circulation," he said, never before having had an audience as fascinating as fascinated. "It's our job to make more money but not at our whim, mind you! The Treasury determines how much new money is to be minted in a year; we only mint it." "But how can something as solid as a coin disappear?" asked Aurelia, frowning. "Oh, it might fall down a drain hole, or be burned up in a big fire," said young Caesar. "Some coins just plain wear out. But most coins disappear because they're hoarded. And when money is hoarded, it can't do its proper job." “What is its proper job?'' asked Aurelia, never having had much to do with money, for her needs were simple and her parents sensitive to them. “To change hands constantly,'' said young Gaius Caesar. "That's called circulation. And when money circulates, every hand it passes through has been blessed by it. It buys goods, or work, or property. But it must keep on circulating." "So you have to make new money to replace the coins someone is hoarding," said Aurelia thoughtfully. "However, the coins being hoarded are still there, really, aren't they? What happens, for instance, if suddenly a huge number of them which have been hoarded are are un-hoarded?" "Then the value of money goes down." Having had her first lesson in simple economics, Aurelia moved on to find out the physical side of coining money. "We actually get to choose what goes on the coins," said young Gaius Caesar eagerly, captivated by his rapt listener. "You mean the Victory in her biga?" "Well, it's easier to get a two-horse chariot on a coin than a four-horse one, which is why Victory rides in a biga rather than a quadriga," he answered. "But those of us with a bit of imagination like to do something more original than just Victory, or Rome. If there are three issues of coins in a year and there mostly are then each of us gets to pick what goes on one of the issues." "And will you pick something?" Aurelia asked. "Yes. We drew lots, and I got the silver denarius. So this year's denarius will have the head of Iulus the son of Aeneas on one side, and the Aqua Marcia on the other, to commemorate my grandfather Marcius Rex," said young Caesar. After that, Aurelia discovered that he would be seeking election as a tribune of the soldiers in the autumn; his brother, Sextus, had been elected a tribune of the soldiers for this year, and was going to Gaul with Gnaeus Mallius Maximus. When the last course was eaten, Uncle Publius packed his niece off home in the well-protected litter, as he had promised. But his masculine guest he persuaded to stay a little longer. "Have a cup or two of unwatered wine," he said. "I'm so full of water I'm going to have to go out now and piss a whole bucket.'' "I'll join you," said the guest, laughing. "And what did you think of my niece?" asked Rutilius Rufus after they had been served with an excellent vintage of Tuscania. "That's like asking whether I like living! Is there any alternative?" "Liked her that much, eh?" "Liked her? Yes, I did. But I'm in love with her too," said young Caesar. "Want to marry her?" "Of course I do! So, I gather, does half of Rome." "That's true, Gaius Julius. Does it put you off?" "No. I'll apply to her father her Uncle Marcus, I mean. And try to see her again, persuade her to think kindly of me. It's worth a try, because I know she liked me." Rutilius Rufus smiled. "Yes, I think she did too." He slid off the couch. "Well, you go home, young Gaius Julius, tell your father what you plan to do, then go and see Marcus Aurelius tomorrow. As for me, I'm tired, so I'm going to bed."
Though he had made himself sound confident enough to Rutilius Rufus, young Gaius Caesar walked home in less hopeful mood. Aurelia's fame was widespread. Many of his friends had applied for her hand; some Marcus Cotta had refused to add to his list, others were entered on it. Among the successful applicants were names more august than his, if only because those names were allied to enormous fortunes. To be a Julius Caesar meant little beyond a social distinction so secure even poverty could not destroy its aura. Yet how could he compete against the likes of Marcus Livius Drusus, or young Scaurus, or Licinius Orator, or Mucius Scaevola, or the elder of the Ahenobarbus brothers? Not knowing that Aurelia had been given the opportunity to choose her own husband, young Caesar rated his chances extremely slender. When he let himself in through the front door and walked down the passageway to the atrium, he could see the lights still burning in his father's study, and blinked back sudden tears before going quietly to the half-open door, and knocking. "Come," said a tired voice. Gaius Julius Caesar was dying. Everyone in the house knew it, including Gaius Julius Caesar, though not a word had been spoken. The illness had started with difficulty in swallowing, an insidious thing which crept onward, so slowly at first that it was hard to tell whether there actually was a worsening. Then his voice had begun to croak, and after that the pain started, not unbearable at first. It had now become constant, and Gaius Julius Caesar could no longer swallow solid food. So far he had refused to see a doctor, though every day Marcia begged him to. "Father?" "Come and keep me company, young Gaius," said Caesar, who turned sixty this year, but in the lamplight looked more like eighty. He had lost so much weight his skin hung on him, the planes of his skull were just that, a skull, and constant suffering had bleached the life out of his once-intense blue eyes. His hand went out to his son; he smiled. "Oh, Father!" Young Caesar tried manfully to keep the emotion out of his voice, but could not; he crossed the room to Caesar, took the hand, and kissed it, then stepped closer and gathered his father to him, arms about the skinny shoulders, cheek against the lifeless silver-gilt hair. "Don't cry, my son," Caesar croaked. "It will soon be over. Athenodorus Siculus is coming tomorrow." A Roman didn't cry. Or wasn't supposed to cry. To young Caesar that seemed a mistaken standard of behavior, but he mastered his tears, drew away, and sat down near enough to his father to retain his clasp of the clawlike hand. "Perhaps Athenodorus will know what to do," he said. "Athenodorus will know what all of us know, that I have an incurable growth in my throat," said Caesar. "However, your mother hopes for a miracle, and I am far enough gone now for Athenodorus not to even think of offering her one. I have gone forward with living for only one reason, to make sure all the members of my family are properly provided for, and to assure myself they are happily settled." Caesar paused, his free hand groping for the cup of unwatered wine which was now his only physical solace. A minute sip or two, and he continued. "You are the last, young Gaius," he whispered. "What am I to hope for you? Many years ago I gave you one luxury, which you have not yet espoused the luxury of choosing your own wife. Now I think the time is here for you to exercise your option. It would make me rest easier if I knew you were decently settled." Young Gaius Caesar lifted his father's hand and laid it against his cheek, leaning forward and taking all the weight of his father's arm. "I've found her, Father," he said. "I met her tonight isn't that strange?" "At Publius Rutilius's?" asked Caesar incredulously. The young man grinned. "I think he was playing matchmaker!" "An odd role for a consul." "Yes." Young Caesar drew a breath. "Have you heard of his niece Marcus Cotta's stepdaughter, Aurelia?" "The current beauty? I think everyone must have." "That's her. She's the one." Caesar looked troubled. "Your mother tells me there's a line of suitors clear around the block, including the richest and noblest bachelors in Rome and even some who are not bachelors, I hear." "All absolutely true," said young Gaius. "But I shall marry her, never fear!" "If your instincts about her are right, then you're going to make a rod for your own back," said the caring father very seriously. "Beauties of her caliber don't make good wives, Gaius. They're spoiled, capricious, willful, and pert. Let her go to some other man, and choose a girl of humbler kind." He bethought himself of a comforting fact, and relaxed. "Luckily you're a complete nobody compared to Lucius Licinius Orator or Gnaeus Domitius Junior, even if you are a patrician. Marcus Aurelius won't even consider you, of that I'm sure. So don't set your heart on her to the exclusion of all others." "She'll marry me, tata, wait and see!" And from that contention Gaius Julius Caesar did not have the strength to budge his son, so he let himself be helped to the bed where he had taken to sleeping alone, so restless and transient were his periods of sleep.