After careful consideration, I decided that I would permit my niece and ward, Aurelia, to choose her own husband. My wife, her mother, agreed. This is to announce that Aurelia has made her choice. Her husband is to be Gaius Julius Caesar Junior, younger son of the Conscript Father Gaius Julius Caesar. I trust you will join with me in offering the couple all felicitations for their coming marriage.
His secretary looked at Cotta with wide eyes. "All right, don't just sit there, get onto it!" said Cotta rather gruffly for such an even-tempered man. "I want thirty-seven copies of that within the hour, each one headed to a man on this list." He shoved the list across the table. "I'll sign them myself, then they are to be delivered by hand immediately." The secretary got to work; so did the gossip grapevine, which easily beat the letters to their recipients. Many were the sore hearts and new grudges when the news got round, for clearly Aurelia's choice was an emotional one, not an expedient one. Somehow that made it less forgivable; none of the starters on Aurelia's list of suitors liked being pipped on the post by the younger son of a mere backbencher, no matter how august his lineage. Besides which, the lucky man was far too good-looking, and that was generally felt to be an unfair advantage. After she recovered from the initial shock, Rutilia was inclined to approve of her daughter's choice. "Oh, think of the children she'll have!" she purred to Cotta as he stood being draped in his purple-bordered toga so he could venture forth to visit the Julius Caesar household, situated in a less fashionable part of the Palatine. "If you leave money out of it, it's a splendid match for an Aurelius, let alone a Rutilius. The Julians are the very top of the tree." "You can't dine off an ancient bloodline," growled Cotta. "Oh, come now, Marcus Aurelius, it isn't that bad! The Marius connection has advanced the Julian fortune mightily, and no doubt it will continue to do so. I can't see any reason why young Gaius Julius won't be consul. I've heard he's very bright, as well as very capable." "Handsome is as handsome does," said Cotta, unconvinced. However, he set out in togate magnificence, a handsome man himself, though with the florid complexion all the Aurelius Cottas possessed; it was a family whose members did not live to be very old, for they were subject to apoplexy. The younger Gaius Julius Caesar was not at home, he was informed, so he asked for the old man, and was surprised when the steward looked grave. "If you will excuse me, Marcus Aurelius, I will make inquiries," the steward said. "Gaius Julius is not well." This was the first Cotta had heard of an illness, but upon reflection he realized that indeed the old man had not been in the Senate House in some time. "I'll wait," he said. The steward came back quickly. "Gaius Julius will see you," he said, conducting Cotta to the study. "I should warn you that his appearance will shock you." Glad he had been warned, Cotta concealed his shock as the bony fingers managed the enormous task of poking forward to offer a handshake. "Marcus Aurelius, it is a pleasure," Caesar said. "Sit down, do! I'm sorry I cannot rise, but my steward will have told you I am not well." A faint smile played around the fine lips. "A euphemism. I'm dying." "Oh, surely not," said Cotta uneasily, seating himself on the edge of a chair with twitching nostrils; there was a peculiar smell in the room, of something unpleasant. "Surely so. I have a growth in my throat. It was confirmed this morning by Athenodorus Siculus." "It grieves me to hear you say it, Gaius Julius. Your presence in the House will be sorely missed, especially by my brother-in-law Publius Rutilius." "He's a good friend." Caesar's red-rimmed eyes blinked tiredly. "I can guess why you're here, Marcus Aurelius, but please tell me." "When the list of my niece and ward Aurelia's suitors got so long and so filled with powerful names that I had to fear the choosing of her husband would leave my sons with more enemies than friends, I permitted her to choose her own spouse," said Cotta. "Two days ago she met your younger son at the house of her uncle, Publius Rutilius, and today she tells me she has chosen him." "And you dislike it as much as I do," said Caesar. "I do." Cotta sighed, shrugged. "However, I passed my word on the matter, so I shall adhere to it." "I made the same concession to my younger son many years ago," said Caesar, and smiled. "We will agree to make the best of it then, Marcus Aurelius, and hope that our children have more sense than we do." "Indeed, Gaius Julius." "You will want to know my son's circumstances." "He told me when he applied for her hand." "He may not have been forthcoming enough. There is more than sufficient land to ensure his seat in the Senate, but at the moment, nothing more," said Caesar. "Unfortunately, I am not in a position to purchase a second house in Rome, and that is a difficulty. This house goes to my older son, Sextus, who married recently and lives here with his wife, now in the early stages of her first pregnancy. My death is imminent, Marcus Aurelius. After my death, it is Sextus who becomes the paterfamilias, and upon his marriage my younger son will have to find another place to live." "I'm sure you know Aurelia is heavily dowered," said Cotta. "Perhaps the most sensible thing to do is to invest her dowry in a house." He cleared his throat. "She inherited a large sum from her father, my brother, which has been invested for some years now. In spite of the market ups and downs, it stands at the moment at about one hundred talents. Forty talents will buy a more than respectable house on the Palatine or the Carinae. Naturally the house would be put in your son's name, but if at any time a divorce should occur, your son would have to replace the sum the house cost. But divorce aside, Aurelia would still have a sufficient sum left in her own right to ensure she doesn't want." Caesar frowned. "I dislike the thought that my son will live in a private dwelling funded by his wife," he croaked. "It would be a presumption on his part. No, Marcus Aurelius, I think something is called for that will safeguard Aurelia's money better than the purchasing of a house she will not own. A hundred talents will buy an insula in excellent condition anywhere on the Esquiline. It should be bought for her, in her name. The young couple can live rent-free in one of the ground-floor apartments, and your niece can enjoy an income from renting the rest of the apartments, an income larger than she can get from other kinds of investments. My son will have to strive of his own volition to earn the money to buy a private house, and that will keep his courage and ambitions high." "I couldn't allow Aurelia to live in an insula!" said Cotta, aghast. "No, I'll slice off forty talents to buy a house, and leave the other sixty talents safely invested." "An insula in her own name," said Caesar stubbornly. He gasped, choked, leaned forward fighting for breath. Cotta poured a cup of wine and placed it in the clutching hand, assisting the hand to Caesar's lips. "Better," said Caesar in a little while. "Perhaps I ought to come back," said Cotta. "No, let's thrash this out now, Marcus Aurelius. We do agree, you and I, that this match is not the one we would have chosen for either participant. Very well then, let us not make it too easy for them. Let us teach them the price of love. If they belong together, a little hardship can only strengthen their bond. If they do not, a little hardship will accelerate the break. We will ensure that Aurelia keeps all of her dowry, and we will not injure my son's pride any more than we can help. An insula, Marcus Aurelius! It must be of the best construction, so make sure you employ honest men to inspect it. And," the whispering voice went on, "don't be too fussy about its location. Rome is growing rapidly, but the market for inexpensive housing is far steadier than for housing of those moving upward. When times are hard, those moving upward slide down, so there are always tenants looking for cheaper rent." "Ye gods, my niece would be a common landlady!" cried Cotta, revolted by the idea. "And why not?" asked Caesar, smiling tiredly. "I hear she's a colossal beauty. Won't the two roles marry? If they won't, perhaps she should think twice about marrying my son." "It is true that she's a colossal beauty," said Cotta, smiling broadly at a secret joke. "I shall bring her to meet you, Gaius Julius, and let you make of her what you will." He got to his feet, leaned over to pat the thin shoulder. "My last word is this: it shall be left to Aurelia to decide what happens to her dowry. You put your proposition of the insula to her yourself, and I shall put my suggestion of a house forward. Is it a deal?" "It's a deal," said Caesar. "But send her quickly, Marcus Aurelius! Tomorrow, at noon." "Will you tell your son?" "Indeed I will. He can fetch her to me tomorrow."
Under normal circumstances Aurelia didn't dither about what she was going to wear; she loved bright colors and she liked to mix them, but the decision was as crisp and no-nonsense as was all else about her. However, having been notified that she was to be fetched by her betrothed to meet her prospective parents-in-law, she dithered. Finally she chose an underdress of fine cerise wool, and overlaid it with a drapery of rose-pink wool, fine enough to let the deeper color below show through, and overlaid that with a second drapery of palest pink, as fine as her wedding veil. She bathed, then scented herself with attar of roses, but her hair was dragged back into its uncompromising bun, and she refused her mother's offering of a little rouge and stibium. "You're too pale today," Rutilia protested. "It's the tension. Go on, look your best, please! Just a dab of rouge on your cheeks, and a line around your eyes." "No," said Aurelia. Pallor turned out not to matter, anyway, for when Gaius Julius Caesar Junior called to fetch her, Aurelia produced all the color her mother could have wished. "Gaius Julius," she said, holding out her hand. "Aurelia," he said, taking it. After that, they didn't know what to do. "Well, go on, goodbye!" said Rutilia irritably; it felt so odd to be losing her first child to this extremely attractive young man, when she only felt eighteen herself. They set off, Cardixa and the Gauls trailing behind. "I should warn you that my father isn't well," said young Caesar with tight control. "He has a malignant growth in his throat, and we fear he will not be with us much longer." "Oh," said Aurelia. They turned a corner. "I got your note," he said, "and hurried to see Marcus Aurelius immediately. I can't believe you chose me!" "I can't believe I found you," she said. "Do you think Publius Rutilius did it deliberately?" That triggered a smile in her. "Definitely." They walked the rest of the block, turned a corner. "I see you're not a talker," said young Caesar. "No," said Aurelia. And that was all the conversation they managed before the Caesar residence was reached. One look at his son's chosen bride caused Caesar to change his thinking somewhat. This was no spoiled, capricious beauty! Oh, she was everything he had heard she was colossally beautiful but not in any accepted mode. Then again, he reasoned, that was probably why to her alone did they append the hyperbole "colossal." What wonderful children they would have! Children he would not live to see. "Sit down, Aurelia." His voice was scarcely audible, so he pointed to a chair right alongside his own, but enough to the front for him to see her. His son he placed upon his other side. "What did Marcus Aurelius tell you about the talk we had?" he asked then. "Nothing," said Aurelia. He went right through the discussion of her dowry he had had with Cotta, making no bones about his own feelings, or about Cotta's. "Your uncle your guardian says the choice is yours. Do you want a house or an insula?" he asked, eyes on her face. What would Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi do? This time she knew the answer: Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi would do the most honorable thing, no matter how hard. Only now she had two honors to consider, her beloved's as well as her own. To choose the house would be more comfortable and familiar by far, but it would injure her beloved's pride to know his wife's money provided their house. She took her gaze off Caesar and stared at his son very gravely. "Which would you prefer?" she asked him. "It's your decision, Aurelia," he said. "No, Gaius Julius, it's your decision. I am to be your wife. I intend to be a proper wife, and know my proper place. You will be the head of our house. All I ask in return for yielding the first place to you is that you always deal with me honestly and honorably. The choice of where we live is yours. I will abide by it, in deed as well as word." “Then we will ask Marcus Aurelius to find you an insula, and register the deeds of ownership in your name," young Caesar said without hesitation. "It must be the most profitable and well-built real estate he can find, and I agree with my father its location is of no moment. The income from the rents will be yours. We will live in one of its ground-floor apartments until I am in a position to buy us a private dwelling. I will support you and our children from the income of my own land, of course. Which means that you will have the full responsibility for your insula I will not be a part of it." She was pleased, it showed at once, but she said nothing. "You're not a talker!" said Caesar, amazed. "No," said Aurelia.
Cotta got to work with a will, though his intention was to find his niece a snug property in one of the better parts of Rome. However, it was not to be; look though he would, the wisest and shrewdest investment was a fairly big insula in the heart of the Subura. Not a new apartment block (it had been built by its single owner some thirty years before, and since this owner had lived in the larger of its two ground-floor apartments, he had built to last), it had stone-and-concrete footings and foundations up to fifteen feet in depth and five feet in width; the outer and load-bearing walls were two feet thick, faced on either side with the irregular brick-and-mortar called opus incertum, and filled with a stout mixture of cement and small-stone aggregate; the windows were all relief-arched in brick; the whole was reinforced with wooden beams at least a foot square and up to fifty feet in length; foot-square wooden beams supported floors of concrete aggregate in the lower storeys and wooden planks in the upper storeys; the generous light-well was load-bearing yet retained its open nature through a system of two-foot-thick square pillars every five feet around its edge, joined at every floor by massive wooden beams. At nine storeys of nine feet each in height including the foot-thick floors, it was quite modest most of the insulae in the same neighborhood were two to four storeys higher but it occupied the whole of a small triangular block where the Subura Minor ran into the Vicus Patricii. Its blunted apex faced the crossroads, its two long sides ran one down the Subura Minor and the other down the Vicus Patricii, and its base was formed by a lane which ran through from one street to the other. Their first sight of it had come at the end of a long string of other properties; Cotta, Aurelia, and young Caesar were by this inured to the patter of a small, glib salesman of impeccably Roman ancestry no Greek freedman sales staff for the real-estate firm of Thorius Postumus! "Note the plaster on the walls, both inside and out," droned the agent. "Not a crack to be seen, foundations as firm as a miser's grip on his last bar of gold . .. eight shops, all under long lease, no trouble with the tenants or the rents . . . two apartments ground-floor with reception rooms two storeys high . .. two apartments only next floor up ... eight apartments per floor to the sixth floor.. . twelve apartments on the seventh, twelve on the eighth .. . shops all have an upper floor for living in... additional storage above false ceilings in the sleep cubicles of the ground-floor apartments ..." On and on he extolled the virtues of the property; after a while Aurelia shut him out and concentrated upon her own thoughts. Uncle Marcus and Gaius Julius could listen to him and take heed. It was a world she didn't know, but one she was determined to master, and if it meant a very different life-style than the one she knew, that was surely all to the good.
Of course she had her fears, wasn't panting eagerly to embark upon two new life-styles at once, namely the lifestyle of marriage and the life-style of insula living. And yet she was discovering in herself a fearlessness too, born of a sense of freedom too new to assimilate fully. Ignorance of any other kind of life had excluded conscious boredom or frustration during her childhood, which indeed had been busy enough, involving as it had many learning processes. But as marriage had loomed, she had found herself wondering what she would do with her days if she couldn't fill them with as many children as had Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi and it was a rare nobleman who wanted more than two children. By nature Aurelia was a doer, a worker; by birth she was excluded from very much in the way of action. Now here she was about to become a landlady as well as a wife, and she was shrewd enough to see that the first at least promised rare opportunities to work. Not only work, but interesting and stimulating work. So she looked about her with shining eyes, and plotted and schemed, tried to imagine what it was going to be like. There was a difference in size between the two ground-floor apartments, for the owner-builder had done himself proud in the matter of the apartment he had occupied. After the Cotta mansion on the Palatine it was very small; in fact, the Cotta mansion was bigger in floor area than the whole of the ground floor of this insula, including shops, crossroads tavern, and both apartments. Though the dining room would barely fit the standard three couches in, and the study was smaller than any study in any private house, they were lofty; the wall between them was more a partition and did not reach the ceiling, thus enabling air and light to flow from the light-well through the dining room into the study beyond. The reception room (it could not properly be called an atrium) had a good terrazzo floor and well-decorated plaster walls, and the two columns down its center were of solid wood painted to look like fancifully colored marble; air and light came in from the street through a huge iron grille high up on the outside wall between the end of a shop along its front and the stairwell which led to the upper floors. Three typically windowless sleeping cubicles led off the reception room, and two more, one of them larger, off the study. There was a little room she could use as her sitting room, and between it and the stairwell was a smaller room Cardixa could have. But the greatest relief of all was to discover that the apartment contained a bathroom and a latrine for, as the agent gleefully explained, the insula lay right athwart one of Rome's main sewers, and was legally supplied with an adjutage to the water supply. "There's a public latrine right opposite on the Subura Minor, and the Subura Baths are right next door to that," said the agent. "Water is no problem. You're at an ideal height here, low enough to get good feed from the Agger reservoirs, but too high to be troubled by backwashes when the Tiber floods, and the size of the adjutage into the mains is larger than the water companies are supplying now if the new blocks can even get connected to the mains, that is! Naturally the previous owner kept the water and sewer for himself the tenants are well served because of the crossroads just outside, and the latrine and baths opposite." Aurelia listened to this fervently, for she had heard that her new life-style would not include the luxuries of laid-on water and a latrine; if any aspect of living in an insula had dismayed her, it was the idea of going without her private bath and her private excretions. None of the other insulae they had inspected provided either water or sewer, even though most of them had been in better districts. If Aurelia had not made up her mind this insula was the right one before, she now certainly did. "How much rent can we expect?" asked young Caesar. "Ten talents a year a quarter of a million sesterces." "Good, good!" said Cotta, nodding. "Upkeep on the building is negligible because it was built to top standards," said the agent. "That in itself means it is never without a full complement of tenants so many of these insulae come tumbling down, you know, or go up like dry bark. Not this place! And it has a street frontage on two of its three sides as well as a somewhat wider than usual lane behind, which means it is less likely to catch fire if a neighboring building does go up. Yes, this place is as sound as a Granius ship. I can say it with truth." Since it was senseless to battle through the Subura encumbered by a litter or a sedan chair, Cotta and young Caesar had brought along the pair of Gauls as extra protection, and undertook to escort Aurelia safely on foot. Not that there was much risk involved, for it was high noon, and everyone on the jam-packed streets seemed more interested in his or her own business than in molesting the beautiful Aurelia. "What do you think?" Cotta asked her as they came down the slight slope of the Fauces Suburae into the Argiletum and prepared to cross the lower end of the Forum Romanum. "Oh, Uncle, I think it's ideal!" she said, then turned to look at young Caesar. "Do you agree, Gaius Julius?" "I think it will suit us very well," he said. "All right then, I'll close the deal this afternoon. At ninety-five talents, it's a good buy, if not a bargain. And you'll have five talents left to use on furniture." "No," said young Caesar firmly, "the furniture is my responsibility and I'm not destitute, you know! My land at Bovillae brings me in a good income." "I know it does, Gaius Julius," said Cotta patiently. "You told me, remember?" He didn't remember. All young Caesar could think about these days was Aurelia.
They were married in April, on a perfect spring day, with every omen auspicious; even Gaius Julius Caesar seemed better. Rutilia wept and Marcia wept, the one because this was the first of her children to enter the married state, the other because this was the last of her children to do so. Julia and Julilla were there, as was Sextus's wife, Claudia, but none of their husbands were; Marius and Sulla were still in Africa, and Sextus Caesar was recruiting in Italy, unable to get leave from the consul Gnaeus Mallius Maximus. Cotta had wanted to rent a house on the Palatine for the young couple for their first month together. "Get used to being married first, then get used to living in the Subura," he said, most concerned for his only girl. But the young couple resolutely refused, so the wedding walk was a very long one, and the bride was cheered by or so it seemed -the whole of the Subura. Young Caesar was profoundly glad the veil hid his bride's face, but took his own share of the casually obscene raillery in excellent part, smiling and bowing as they walked. "It's our new neighborhood, we'd best learn to get on with them," he said. "Just close your ears." "I'd rather you steered clear of them," muttered Cotta, who had wanted to hire gladiators to escort the bridal party; the teeming masses and the crime rate worried him sick, as did the language. By the time they reached Aurelia's insula they had quite a gathering tacked on behind, hopeful it seemed that there would be plenty of wine at the end of the road, and determined to invade the festivities. However, when young Caesar got the big door unlocked and swung his new wife off her feet to carry her across the threshold, Cotta, Lucius Cotta, and the two Gauls managed to keep the throng at bay for long enough for young Caesar to get inside and slam the door. Amid howls of protest, Cotta marched away down the Vicus Patricii with his head up. Only Cardixa was present inside the apartment; Aurelia had decided to use her leftover dowry money to buy household servants, but had postponed this duty until after her marriage, for she wanted to do it all by herself, not suffer the presence and advice of her mother or her mother-in-law. Young Caesar too had servants to buy the steward, the wine steward, his secretary, a clerk, and a valet but Aurelia had more: two heavy-duty cleaning maids, a laundress, a cook and assistant cook, two general-purpose servants, and a strong man. Not a large household by any means, but adequate. It was growing dark outside, but the apartment was far darker, something the high noon of their only previous visit had not indicated. Light percolating down the nine floors of the central well dimmed early, as did light coming in from the street, a defile of tall insulae. Cardixa had lit what lamps they had, but they were far too few to banish black corners; she herself had retired to her little room, to leave the newlyweds decently alone. The noise was what amazed Aurelia. It came from everywhere the street outside, the stairwell leading to the upper floors, the central light-well even the ground seemed to rumble. Cries, curses, crashes, shouted conversations, screamed altercations and vituperations, babies crying, children wailing, men and women hawking and spitting, a band of musicians banging away at drums and cymbals, snatches of song, oxen bellowing, sheep bleating, mules and asses wheezing, carts endlessly trundling, howls of laughter. "Oh, we won't be able to hear ourselves think!" she said, blinking away sudden tears. "Gaius Julius, I'm so sorry! I never thought of the noise!" Young Caesar was wise enough and sensitive enough to know that a part at least of this uncharacteristic outburst was due not to the noise, but to an unacknowledged nervousness brought on by the hectic events of the past few days, the sheer strain of getting married. He had felt it himself; how much greater then must it be for his new little wife? So he laughed cheerfully and said, "We'll get used to it, never fear. I guarantee that in a month we won't even notice it. Besides, it's bound to be less in our bedroom." And he took her by the hand, feeling it tremble. Sure enough, the master's sleeping cubicle, reached through his study, was quieter. It was also pitch-black and utterly airless unless the door to the study was left open, for it had been given a false ceiling for storage purposes. Leaving Aurelia standing in the study, young Caesar went and fetched a lamp from the reception room. Hand in hand, they entered the cubicle, and stood enchanted. Cardixa had decked it out in flowers, strewn scented petals all over the double sleeping couch, and stood every height of vase along the walls, then stuffed them with roses, stocks, violets; on a table reposed a flagon of wine, one of water, two golden cups, and a big plate of honey cakes. Neither of them was shy. Being Romans, they were properly enlightened about sexual matters, yet modest. Every Roman who could afford it preferred privacy for intimate activities, especially if the body was to be bared; yet they were not inhibited. Of course young Caesar had had his share of adventures, though his face belied his nature; the one was strikingly noticeable, the other quietly inconspicuous. For with all his undeniable gifts, young Caesar was basically a retiring man, lacking the push and shove of an aggressive and political personality; a man others could rely upon, but who was more likely to advance their careers than his own. Publius Rutilius Rufus's instincts had been exactly right. Young Caesar and Aurelia fitted together beautifully. He was tender, considerate, respectful, warmly loving rather than full of fire; perhaps had he burned with passion, she might have kindled from him, but that neither of them would ever know. Their lovemaking was delicate in its touch, soft in its kisses, slow in its pace. It satisfied them; it even inspired them. And Aurelia was able to tell herself that she had surely earned the unqualified approval of Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi, for she had done her duty exactly as Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi must have done hers, with a pleasure and contentment that guaranteed the act itself would never rule her life or dictate her conduct outside the marriage bed yet also guaranteed that she would never come to dislike the marriage bed.
3
During the winter which Quintus Servilius Caepio spent in Narbo grieving for his lost gold, he received a letter from the brilliant young advocate Marcus Livius Drusus, one of Aurelia's most ardent and most disappointed suitors.
I was but nineteen when my father the censor died, and left me to inherit not only all his property, but also the position of paterfamilias. Perhaps luckily, my only onerous burden was my thirteen-year-old sister, deprived as she was of both father and mother. At the time, my mother, Cornelia, asked to take my sister into her household, but of course I declined. Though there was never any divorce, you are I know aware of the coolness between my parents that came to a head when my father agreed that my young brother should be adopted out. My mother was always far fonder of him than of me, so when my brother became Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus Livianus, she pleaded his young age as an excuse, and went with him to his new household, where indeed she found a kind of life far freer and more licentious than ever she could have lived under my father's roof. I refresh your memory about these things as a point of honor, for I feel my honor touched by my mother's shabby and selfish behavior. I have, I flatter myself, brought up my sister, Livia Drusa, as befits her great position. She is now eighteen years old, and ready for marriage. As, Quintus Servilius, am I, even at my young age of twenty-three. I know it is more customary to wait until after twenty-five to marry, and I know there are many who prefer to wait until after they enter the Senate. But I cannot. I am the paterfamilias, and the only male Livius Drusus of my generation. My brother, Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus Livianus, can no longer claim the Livius Drusus name or any share of the Livius Drusus fortune. Therefore it behooves me to marry and procreate, though I decided at the time of my father's death that I would wait until my sister was old enough to marry.
The letter was as stiff and formal as the young man, but Quintus Servilius Caepio had no fault to find with that; he and the young man's father had been good friends, just as his son and the young man were good friends.
Therefore, Quintus Servilius, I wish as the head of my family to propose a marriage alliance to you, the head of your family. I have not, incidentally, thought it wise to discuss this matter with my uncle, Publius Rutilius Rufus. Though I have nothing against him as husband of my Aunt Livia, nor as father of her children, I do not consider either his blood or his temperament sufficiently weighty to make his counsel of any value. Only recently, for instance, it came to my ears that he actually persuaded Marcus Aurelius Cotta to allow his stepdaughter, Aurelia, to choose her own husband. A more un-Roman act is hard to imagine. And of course she chose a pretty-boy Julius Caesar, a flimsy and impoverished fellow who will never amount to anything.
There. That disposed of Publius Rutilius' Rufus. On ploughed Marcus Livius Drusus, sore of heart, but also sore of dignitas.
In electing to wait for my sister, I thought to relieve my own wife of the responsibility of housing my sister, and being answerable for her conduct. I can see no virtue in transmitting one's own duties to others who cannot be expected to share the same degree of concern. What I now propose, Quintus Servilius, is that you permit me to marry your daughter, Servilia Caepionis, and permit your son, Quintus Servilius Junior, to marry my sister, Livia Drusa. It is an ideal solution for both of us. Our ties through marriage go back many generations, and both my sister and your daughter have dowries of exactly the same size, which means that no money needs to change hands, an advantage in these times of cash-flow shortages. Please let me know your decision.
There was really nothing to decide; it was the match Quintus Servilius Caepio had dreamed of, for the Livius Drusus fortune was vast, as was the Livius Drusus nobility. He wrote back at once:
My dear Marcus Livius, I am delighted. You have my permission to go ahead and make all the arrangements.
And so Drusus broached the matter with his friend Caepio Junior, anxious to prepare the ground for the letter he knew would soon arrive from Quintus Servilius Caepio to his son; better that Caepio Junior saw his coming marriage as desirable than the result of a direct order. "I'd like to marry your sister," he said to Caepio Junior, a little more abruptly than he had meant to. Caepio Junior blinked, but didn't answer. "I'd also like to see you marry my sister," Drusus went on. Caepio Junior blinked several times, but didn't answer. "Well, what do you say?" asked Drusus. Finally Caepio Junior marshaled his wits (which were not nearly as great as either his fortune or his nobility), and said, "I'd have to ask my father." "I already have," said Drusus. "He's delighted." "Oh! Then I suppose it's all right," said Caepio Junior. "Quintus Servilius, Quintus Servilius, I want to know what you think!" cried Drusus, exasperated. "Well, my sister likes you, so that's all right.. .. And I like your sister, but. . ." He didn't go on. "But what?" demanded Drusus. "I don't think your sister likes me." It was Drusus's turn to blink. "Oh, rubbish! How could she not like you? You're my best friend! Of course she likes you! It's the ideal arrangement, we'll all stay together." "Then I'd be pleased," said Caepio Junior. "Good!" said Drusus briskly. "I discussed all the things which had to be discussed when I wrote to your father dowry payments and the like. Nothing to worry about." "Good," said Caepio Junior. They were sitting on a bench under a splendid old oak tree growing beside the Pool of Curtius in the lower Forum Romanum, for they had just eaten a delicious lunch of unleavened bread pockets stuffed with a spicy mixture of lentils and minced pork. Rising to his feet, Drusus handed his large napkin to his body servant, and stood while the man made sure his snowy toga was unsullied by the food. "Where are you off to in such a hurry?" asked Caepio Junior. "Home to tell my sister," said Drusus. He lifted one sharply peaked black brow. "Don't you think you ought to go home to your sister and tell her?" "I suppose so," said Caepio Junior dubiously. "Wouldn't you rather tell her yourself? She likes you." "No, you have to tell her, silly! You're in loco parentis at the moment, so it's your job just as it's my job to tell Livia Drusa." And off went Drusus up the Forum, heading for the Vestal Steps.
His sister was at home where else would she be? Since Drusus was the head of the family and their mother, Cornelia, was forbidden the door, Livia Drusa could not leave the house for a moment without her brother's permission. Nor would she ever have dared to sneak out, for in her brother's eyes she was potentially branded with her mother's shame, and seen as a weak and corruptible female creature who could not be allowed the smallest latitude; he would have believed the worst of her, even on no evidence at all beyond escape. "Please ask my sister to come to the study," he said to his steward when he arrived at his house. It was commonly held to be the finest house in all Rome, and had only just been completed when Drusus the censor died. The view from the loggia balcony across the front of its top storey was magnificent, for it stood on the very highest point of the Palatine cliff above the Forum Romanum. Next door to it was the area Flacciana, the vacant block once containing the house of Marcus Fulvius Flaccus, and on the far side of that was the house of Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar. In true Roman style, even on the side of the vacant block its outside walls were windowless, for when a house was built there again, its outside walls would fuse to Drusus's. A high wall with a strong wooden door in it as well as a pair of freight gates fronted onto the Clivus Victoriae, and was actually the back of the house; the front of the house overlooked the view, was three storeys high, and was built out on piers fixed firmly in the slope of the cliff. The top floor, level with the Clivus Victoriae, housed the noble family; the storage rooms and kitchens and servants' quarters were below, and did not run the full depth of the block because of its abrupt slope. The freight gates in the wall along the street opened directly into the peristyle-garden, which was so large it contained six wonderful, fully grown lotus trees imported as saplings from Africa ninety years before by Scipio Africanus, who had owned the site at the time. Every summer they bloomed a drooping rain of blossom two red, two orange, and two deep yellow that lasted for over a month and filled the whole house with perfume; later they were gracefully provided with a thin cover of pale-green fernlike compound leaves; and in winter they were bare, permitting every morsel of sunlight tenure in the courtyard. A long thin shallow pool faced with pure-white marble had four beautiful matching bronze fountains by the great Myron, one on each corner, and other full-scale bronze statues by Myron and Lysippus ranged down the length of either side of the pool satyrs and nymphs, Artemis and Actaeon, Dionysos and Orpheus. All these bronzes were painted in startlingly lifelike verisimilitude, so that the courtyard at first glance suggested a congress of woodsy immortals. A Doric colonnade ran down either side of the peristyle-garden and across the side opposite the street wall, supported by wooden columns painted yellow, their bases and capitals picked out in bright colors. The floors of the colonnade were of polished terrazzo, the walls along its back vividly painted in greens and blues and yellows, and hung in the spaces between earth-red pilasters were some of the world's greatest paintings a child with grapes by Zeuxis, a "Madness of Ajax" by Parrhasius, some nude male figures by Timanthes, one of the portraits of Alexander the Great by Apelles, and a horse by Apelles so lifelike it seemed tethered to the wall when viewed from the far side of the colonnade. The study opened onto the back colonnade to one side of big bronze doors; the dining room opened onto it to the other side. And beyond that was a magnificent atrium as large as the whole Caesar house, lit by a rectangular opening in the roof supported by columns at each of the four corners and on the long sides of the pool below. The walls were painted in trompe l'oeil realism to simulate pilasters, dadoes, entablatures, and between these were panels of black-and-white cubes so three-dimensional they leaped out at the beholder, and panels of swirling flowerlike patterns; the colors were vivid, mostly reds, with blues and greens and yellows. The ancestral cupboards containing the wax masks of the Livius Drusus ancestors were all perfectly kept up, of course; painted pedestals called herms because they were adorned with erect male genitalia supported busts of ancestors, or gods, or mythical women, or Greek philosophers, all exquisitely painted to appear real. Full-length statues, each painted to simulate life, stood around the impluvium pool and the walls, some on marble plinths, some on the ground. Great silver and gold chandeliers dangled from the ornate plaster ceiling an immense distance above (it was painted to resemble a starlit sky between ranks of gilded plaster flowers), or stood seven and eight feet tall on the floor, which was a colored mosaic depicting the revels of Bacchus and his Bacchantes dancing and drinking, feeding deer, teaching lions to quaff wine.
Drusus didn't notice any of the magnificence, for he was inured to it, and rather impervious to it as well; it had been his father and his grandfather who dabbled with perfect taste in works of art. The steward found Drusus's sister outside on the loggia, which opened off the front of the atrium. She was always alone, Livia Drusa, and always lonely. The house was so big she couldn't even plead that she needed the exercise of walking on the streets outside, and when she fancied a shopping spree, her brother simply summoned several whole shops and stalls to his house, and had the vendors spread out their wares in some of the suites along the colonnade, and ordered the steward to pay for whatever Livia Drusa chose. Where both the Julias had trotted all over the more respectable parts of Rome under the eye of their mother or trusted servants, and Aurelia visited relatives and school friends constantly, and the Clitumnas and Nicopolises of Rome lived so free a life they even reclined to dine, Livia Drusa was absolutely cloistered, the prisoner of a wealth and exclusivity so great it forbade its women any egress; she was also the victim of her mother's escape, her mother's present freedom to do as she liked. Livia Drusa had been ten years old when her mother a Cornelia of the Scipios had left the house the Livius Drusus family had then lived in; she had passed then into the complete care of her indifferent father who preferred to walk slowly along his colonnades looking at his masterpieces and a series of maidservants and tutors who were all far too afraid of the Livius Drusus power to make themselves her friends. Her older brother, fifteen at the time, she hardly saw at all. And three years after her mother had departed with her little brother, Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus Livianus, as he now had to be called, they had moved from the old house to this vast mausoleum; and she was lost, a tiny atom moving aimlessly amid an eternity of empty space, deprived of love, conversation, companionship, notice. When her father died almost immediately after the move, his passing made no difference. So unacquainted was she with laughter that when from time to time it floated up from the servants' crowded airless cells below, she wondered what it was, why they did it. The only world she had found to love lay within the cylinders of books, for no one stopped her reading and writing. So she did both for a great deal of every one of her days, thrilling to the repercussions of the wrath of Achilles and the deeds of Greeks and Trojans, lit up by tales of heroes, monsters, gods, and the mortal girls they seemed to hanker after as more desirable than immortals. And when she had managed to deal with the awful shock of the physical manifestations of puberty for there was no one to tell her what was the matter or what to do her hungry and passionate nature discovered the wealth of poetry written about love. As fluent in Greek as in Latin, she discovered Alcman who had invented the love poem (or so it was said) and passed to Pindar's maiden songs, and Sappho, and Asclepiades. Old Sosius of the Argiletum, who occasionally simply bundled up whatever he had and sent the buckets of books to Drusus's house, had no idea who the reader was; he just assumed the reader was Drusus. So shortly after Livia Drusa turned seventeen, he began to send her the works of the new poet Meleager, who was very much alive and very much attracted to lust as well as love. More fascinated than shocked, Livia Drusa found the literature of eroticism, and thanks to Meleager sexually awoke at last. Not that it did her any good; she went nowhere, saw no one. In that house, it would have been unthinkable to make overtures to a slave, or for a slave to make overtures to Livia Drusa. Sometimes she met the friends of her brother Drusus, but only in passing. Except, that is, for his best friend, Caepio Junior. And Caepio Junior short-legged, pimply faced, homely by any standard she identified with the buffoons in Menander's plays, or the loathsome Thersites whom Achilles slew with one blow from his hand after Thersites accused the great hero of making love to the corpse of the Amazon queen Penthesileia. It wasn't that Caepio Junior ever did anything to remind her forcibly of either buffoons or Thersites; only that in her starved imagination she had gifted these types of men with the face of Caepio Junior. Her favorite ancient hero was King Odysseus (she thought of him in Greek, so gave him the Greek version of his name), for she liked his brilliant way of solving everybody else's dilemmas, and found his wooing of his wife and then his wife's twenty-year duel of wits with her suitors as she waited for Odysseus to come home the most romantic and satisfying of all the Homeric love stories. And Odysseus she had gifted with the face of the young man she had seen once or twice only on the loggia of the house below Drusus's. This was the house of Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, who had two sons; but neither of his sons was the young man on his loggia, for them she had met in passing when they came to visit her brother. Odysseus had red hair, and he was left-handed (though had she read a little more intently and discovered that he owned a pair of legs far too short for his trunk, she might have lost her enthusiasm for him, as short legs were Livia Drusa's pet hate); so too the strange young man on Domitius Ahenobarbus's loggia. He was very tall, his shoulders were wide, and his toga sat upon him in a way suggesting that the rest of his body was powerfully slender. In the sun his red hair glittered, and his head on its long neck was very proud, the head of a king like Odysseus. Even at the distance from which she had seen him, the young man's masterfully beaked nose was apparent, but she could distinguish nothing else of his face even so, she knew in her bones that his eyes would be large and luminous and grey, as were the eyes of King Odysseus of Ithaca. So when she read the scorching love poems of Meleager, she insinuated herself into the role of the girl or the young boy being assaulted by the poet, and always the poet was the young man on Ahenobarbus's balcony. If she thought of Caepio Junior at all, it was with a grimace of distaste.
"Livia Drusa, Marcus Livius wants to see you in his study at once," said the steward, breaking into her dream, which was of remaining on the loggia long enough to see the red-haired stranger emerge onto the loggia thirty feet below. But of course the summons pre-empted her wishes; she turned and followed the steward inside. Drusus was studying a paper on his desk, but looked up as soon as his sister entered the room, his face displaying a calm, indulgent, rather remote interest. "Sit down," he said, indicating the chair on the client's side of his table. She sat and watched him with equal calm and equal lack of humor; she had never heard Drusus laugh, and rarely seen him smile. The same could he have said of her. A little alarmed, Livia Drusa realized that he was studying her with more intentness than usual. His interest was a proxy affair, an inspection of her carried out on Caepio Junior's behalf, which of course she could not know. Yes, she was a pretty little thing, he thought, and though in stature she was small, she had at least escaped the family taint of short legs. Her figure was delightful, full and high of breast, narrow-waisted, nicely hipped; her feet and hands were quite delicate and thin a sign of beauty and she did not bite her nails, but kept them well manicured. Her chin was pointed, her forehead broad, her nose reasonably long and a little aquiline. In mouth and eyes she fulfilled every criterion of true beauty, for the eyes were very large and well opened, and the mouth was small, a rosebud. Thick and becomingly dressed, her hair was black, as were eyes, brows, and lashes. Yes indeed, Livia Drusa was pretty. No Aurelia, however. His heart contracted painfully; it still did whenever he thought of Aurelia. How very quickly he had written to Quintus Servilius once he learned of Aurelia's impending marriage! It was all for the best; there was nothing wrong with the Aurelians, but neither in wealth nor in social standing could they equal the patrician Servilians. Besides which, he had always been fond of young Servilia Caepionis, and had no qualms about making her his wife. "My dear, I've found a husband for you," he said without preamble, and looking highly pleased with himself. It obviously came as a shock to her, though she kept her face impassive enough. She licked her lips, then managed to ask, "Who, Marcus Livius?" He became enthusiastic. "The very best of good fellows, a wonderful friend! Quintus Servilius Junior." Her face froze into a look of absolute horror; she parted her dry lips to speak, but couldn't. "What's the matter?" he asked, genuinely puzzled. "I can't marry him," Livia Drusa whispered. "Why?" "He's disgusting revolting!" "Don't be ridiculous!" She began to shake her head, and kept on shaking it with increasing vehemence. "I won't marry him, I won't!" An awful thought occurred to Drusus, ever conscious of his mother; he got up, came round the table, and stood over his sister. "Have you been meeting someone?" The motion of her head ceased, she lifted it to stare up at him, outraged. "Me? How could I possibly meet anyone, stuck in this house every single day of my life? The only men I see come here with you, and I don't even get the opportunity to converse with them! If you have them to dinner, you don't ask me the only time I'm permitted to come to dinner is when you have that frightful oaf Quintus Servilius Junior!" "How dare you!" he said, growing angry; it had never occurred to him that she would judge his best friend differently than he did. "I won't marry him!" she cried. "I'd rather be dead!" "Go to your room," he said, looking flinty. She got up at once, and walked toward the door which opened onto the colonnade. "Not your sitting room, Livia Drusa. Your bedroom. And there you will stay until you come to your senses." A burning look was her only answer, but she turned around and left by the door to the atrium. Drusus remained by her vacant chair, and tried to deal with his anger. It was preposterous! How dare she defy him! After some moments his emotions quietened; he was able to grasp the tail of this spitting cat, even though he had no idea what to do with it. In all his life no one had ever defied him; no one had ever put him in a position from which he could see no logical way out. Used to being obeyed, and to being treated with a degree of respect and deference not normally accorded to one so young, he had no idea what to do. If he had known his sister better and he now had to admit that he knew her not at all if his father were alive if his mother oh, what a pickle! And what to do? Soften her up a bit, came the answer; he sent for his steward at once. "The lady Livia Drusa has offended me," he said with admirable calm and no expression of ire, "and I have ordered her to her bedroom. Until you can fit a bolt to it, you will keep someone on guard outside her door at all times. Send a woman in to attend to her wants whom she doesn't know. For no reason whatsoever is she to be permitted to leave her bedroom, is that clear?" "Perfectly, Marcus Livius," said the steward woodenly.
And so the duel began. Livia Drusa was sent to a smaller prison than she was used to, not so dark or airless as most sleeping cubicles because it lay adjacent to the loggia, and so had a grille high up on the outside wall. But a dismal prison nonetheless. When she asked for books to read and paper to write upon, she found out just how dismal a prison it was, for her request was refused. Four walls enclosing a space some eight feet by eight feet, a bed, a chamber pot, and dreary unpalatable meals on a tray brought by a woman she had never seen before; that was now Livia Drusa's lot. In the meantime, Drusus was faced with the task of keeping his sister's unwillingness from his best friend, and lost no time commencing. The moment he had issued his orders regarding Livia" Drusa, he donned his toga again and went around the corner to see Caepio Junior. "Oh, good!" beamed Caepio Junior. "I thought I'd better have a further word with you," said Drusus, making no attempt to sit down, and having no real idea what the further word was going to be. "Well, before you do, Marcus Livius, go and see my sister, will you? She's very anxious." That at least was a good sign; she must have accepted the news of her betrothal if not with joy, at least with equanimity, thought the disillusioned Drusus. He found her in her sitting room, and was left in no doubt at all that his suit was welcome, for she jumped to her feet the moment he filled the doorway, and cast herself upon his chest, much to his discomfort. "Oh, Marcus Livius!" she said, gazing up at him with a melting adoration. Why hadn't Aurelia ever looked at him like this? But resolutely he put that thought away, and smiled down at the palpitating Servilia Caepionis. She wasn't a beauty and she had the family's short legs, but she had at least escaped the family tendency to acne as had his sister and she had a singularly beautiful pair of eyes, soft and tender in their expression, satisfyingly large, liquidly dark. Though he was not in love with her, he thought that in time he could love her, and he certainly had always liked her. So he kissed her on her soft mouth, was surprised and gratified by her response, and stayed long enough with her to have a few sentences of conversation. "And your sister, Livia Drusa, is pleased?" asked Servilia Caepionis when he got up to leave. Drusus stood very still. "Very pleased," he said, then added, the words popping out of nowhere, "Unfortunately she isn't well at the moment." "Oh, that's too bad! Never mind, tell her that as soon as she feels up to visitors, I'm coming to see her. We are to be sisters-in-law twice over, but I'd rather we were friends." That drew a smile from him. "Thank you," he said. Caepio Junior was waiting impatiently in his father's study, which he occupied in his father's absence. "I am delighted," said Drusus, sitting down. "Your sister is pleased at the match." "I told you she liked you," said Caepio Junior. "But how did Livia Drusa take the news?" He was well prepared now. "She was delighted," he lied blandly. "Unfortunately I found her taken to her bed with a fever. The doctor was already there, and he's a little worried. Apparently there are complications, and he fears whatever it is might be contagious." "Ye gods!" Caepio Junior exclaimed, face paling. "We'll wait and see," said Drusus soothingly. "You like her very much, Quintus Servilius, don't you?" "My father says I can't do better than Livia Drusa. He says I have excellent taste. Did you tell him I liked her?" "I did." Drusus smiled faintly. "It's been rather obvious for a couple of years now, you know." "I got my father's letter today, it was waiting when I got home. He says Livia Drusa is as rich as she is noble. He likes her too," said Caepio Junior. "Well, as soon as she's feeling better we'll all have dinner together, and talk about the wedding. The beginning of May, eh? Before the unlucky time.'' Drusus got up. "I can't stay, Quintus Servilius, I'll have to get back and see how my sister is." Both Caepio Junior and Drusus had been elected tribunes of the soldiers, and were to go to Further Gaul with Gnaeus Mallius Maximus. But rank and wealth and political conformity told; where the relatively obscure Sextus Caesar couldn't even get leave from his recruiting duties to attend his brother's wedding, neither Drusus nor Caepio Junior had yet been called up. Certainly Drusus envisioned no difficulty in planning a double wedding for early May, even though by then both the bridegrooms would be involved with army duties, even if the army itself was already on its way to Further Gaul; they could always catch it up. He issued orders to his entire household in case Caepio Junior or his sister should come inquiring after Livia Drusa's health, and cut Livia Drusa's diet back to unleavened bread and water. For five days he left her completely alone, then sent for her to his study. She came blinking a little in the brighter light, her feet not quite steady, her hair inexpertly combed. That she had not been sleeping was manifest in the state of her eyes, but her brother could detect no evidence of prolonged tears. Her hands trembled, she had trouble controlling her mouth, and the bottom lip was bitten raw. "Sit down," said Drusus curtly. She sat. "How do you feel now about marrying Quintus Servilius?" Her whole body began to shake; what little color she had preserved now faded completely. "Don't want to," she said. Her brother leaned forward, his hands clasped together. "Livia Drusa, I am the head of our family. I have absolute control over your life. I even have absolute control over your death. It so happens I'm very fond of you. That means I dislike hurting you, and it distresses me greatly to see you suffer. You are suffering now. I am distressed. But we are both Romans. That fact means everything to me. It means more to me than you do. Than anyone does! I am very sorry that you cannot like my friend Quintus Servilius. However, you will marry him! It is your duty as a Roman woman to obey me. As you know. Quintus Servilius is the husband our father intended for you, just as his father intended Servilia Caepionis to be my wife. For a while I considered taking a wife of my own choice, but events have only gone to prove that my father may his shade be appeased was wiser than I. Besides all of that, we have the embarrassment of a mother who has not proven an ideal Roman woman. Thanks to her, the responsibility which rests on you is much greater. Nothing you do or say can be allowed to give anyone room to think her flaw is also present in you." Livia Drusa dragged in a huge breath, and said again, but more shakily still, "Don't want to!" "Want has nothing to do with it," said Drusus sternly. "Who do you think you are, Livia Drusa, to hold your personal wants as more important than our family's honor and standing? Make up your mind to it, you will marry Quintus Servilius, and no other. If you persist in this defiance, you will marry no one at all. In fact, you will never leave your bedroom again as long as you live. There you will stay, without company or diversion, day in and day out, forever." His eyes stared at her with less feeling than two cold black stones. "I mean what I say, sister. No books, no paper, no food other than bread and water, no bath, no mirror, no maidservants, no clean clothes, no fresh bedding, no brazier during winter, no extra blankets, no shoes or slippers for your feet, no belts or girdles or ribbons whereby to hang yourself, no scissors to cut your nails or your hair, no knives to use to stab yourself and if you try to starve yourself, I will have the food shoved forcibly down your throat." He snapped his fingers, a small sharp sound that brought the steward in with the kind of suspicious alacrity that suggested he had been listening at the door. "Take my sister back to her room. And bring her to me at dawn tomorrow before you admit any clients to my house." The steward had to help her to her feet, one hand beneath her arm, and guide her out of the room. "I will expect your answer tomorrow," Drusus said. Not one word did the steward say to her as he led her across the atrium; firmly but gently he put her inside her bedroom door, stepped back, closed the door, and shot the bolt Drusus had ordered fitted to its outside. Darkness was falling; Livia Drusa could tell that she had no more than two hours left to her before the pall of black, empty nothingness enfolded her for the duration of the long late-winter night. So far she hadn't wept. A strong consciousness that she was in the right coupled with a burning indignation had sustained her for the first three days and nights, and after that she had taken solace from the plights of all the heroines she had discovered through her reading. Penelope's twenty-year wait came top of the list, of course, but Danae had been shut up in her bedroom by her father, and Ariadne had been abandoned by Theseus on the seashore of Naxos. ... In every case, things had changed for the better. Odysseus came home, Perseus was born, and Ariadne was rescued by a god.... But with her brother's words still echoing inside her thoughts, Livia Drusa began to understand the difference between great literature and real life. Great literature was never intended to be either facsimile or echo of real life; it was meant to shut out real life for a while, to free the harried mind from mundane considerations, so that the mind could holiday amid glorious language and vivid word-pictures and inspiring or alluring ideas. At least Penelope had enjoyed the freedom of her own palace halls, and the company of her son; and Danae had been dazzled by showers of gold; and Ariadne had suffered no more than the pinprick of Theseus's rejection before one far greater than Theseus espoused her. But in real life Penelope would have been raped and forcibly married and her son murdered, and Odysseus would never have come home at all; and Danae and her baby would have floated in their chest until the sea drowned them; and Ariadne would have been left pregnant by Theseus, and died in a lonely childbirth. . . . Would Zeus appear in a shower of gold to enliven the long imprisonment of a Livia Drusa of modern-day Rome? Or Dionysos drive through her frigid little dark hole of a room in his chariot drawn by leopards? Or Odysseus string his great bow and slay her brother and Caepio Junior with the same shaft he had sent through the hollows of the axes? No! Of course not! They had all lived more than a thousand years ago if they had ever lived at all, save in some poet's indelible lines. Was that the meaning of immortality, to have life through some poet's indelible lines rather than because the flesh had ever quickened? Somehow she had clung to the thought that her red-haired hero from the balcony of Ahenobarbus thirty feet below would learn of her plight, and break in through the grille in her wall, and spirit her away to live on some enchanted isle in the wine-dark sea. And she had dreamed the awful hours away seeing him in her mind's eye, so tall and Odysseus-like, brilliant, innovative, fantastically courageous. What a tiny obstacle he would find the house of Marcus Livius Drusus once he discovered she lay captive within it! Ah, but tonight was different. Tonight was the real beginning of a confinement that had no happy ending, no miraculous deliverance. Who knew she was imprisoned, save her brother and his servants? And who among his servants would dare to flout her brother's orders, or pity her more than they feared him? He was not a cruel man; she understood that very well. But he was used to being obeyed, and she, his young sister, was as much his creature as the least of his slaves, or the dogs he kept in his hunting lodge in Umbria. His word was her law. His wishes her commands. What she wanted had no validity, and therefore no existence outside her own mind. She felt an itching beneath her left eye, and then a hot, itching trail down her left cheek. Something splashed onto the back of her hand. The right eye itched, the right cheek was seared; the splashes grew more frequent, like short summer rain getting started, the drops falling faster and faster. Livia Drusa wept, for her heart was broken. Rocked back and forth; mopped her face, her streaming eyes, and her running nose; and wept again, for her heart was truly broken. Many hours she wept, alone in an ocean of Stygian gloom, the prisoner of her brother's will and her own unwillingness to do his will. But when the steward came to unbolt her door and admit the blinding glare of his lamp into the smelly coldness of her bedroom, she was sitting on the edge of her bed, dry-eyed and calm. And rose to her feet and walked out of the room ahead of him, across the vast vivid atrium to her brother's study. "Well?" asked Drusus. "I will marry Quintus Servilius," she said. "Good. But I require more of you, Livia Drusa." "I will endeavor to please you in everything, Marcus Livius," she said steadily. "Good." He snapped his fingers, the steward obeyed the summons immediately. "Send some hot honeyed wine and some honey cakes to the lady Livia Drusa's sitting room, and tell her maidservant to prepare a bath." "Thank you," she said colorlessly. "It is my genuine pleasure to make you happy, Livia Drusa so long as you behave like a proper Roman woman, and do what is expected of you. I expect you to behave toward Quintus Servilius as any young woman would who welcomed her marriage. You will let him know that you are pleased, and you will treat him with unfailing deference, respect, interest, and concern. At no time even in the privacy of your bedroom after you are married will you give Quintus Servilius the slightest indication that he is not the husband of your choice. Do you understand?" he asked sternly. "I understand, Marcus Livius," she said. "Come with me." He led her into the atrium, where the great rectangle in the roof was beginning to pale and a pearly light stole inside, purer than the lamps, fainter yet more luminous. In the wall was a small shrine to the household gods, the Lares and the Penates, flanked on either side by the exquisitely painted miniature temples which housed the imagines of the famous men of the Livius Drusus family, from her dead father the censor all the way back to the beginning. And there Marcus Livius Drusus made her swear a terrible oath to terrible Roman gods who had no statues and no mythologies and no humanity, who were personifications of qualities inside the mind, not divine men and women; under pain of their displeasure she swore to be a warm and loving wife to Quintus Servilius Caepio Junior. After it. was done he dismissed her to her sitting room, where the hot honeyed wine and honey cakes were waiting. She got some of the wine down and felt the benefit of it at once, but her throat closed up at the very thought of swallowing the cakes, so she put them to one side with a smile at her maid, and rose to her feet. "I want my bath," she said. And that afternoon Quintus Servilius Caepio Junior and his sister, Servilia Caepionis, came to dine with Marcus Livius Drusus and his sister, Livia Drusa, a cozy quartet with marriages to plan. Livia Drusa abided by her oath, thanking every god that she did not belong to a smiling family; no one thought it a bit odd that she remained absolutely solemn, for they all did. Low-voiced and interested, she conversed with Caepio Junior while her brother concentrated upon Servilia Caepionis, and slowly Caepio Junior's inchoate fears subsided. Why had he ever thought Livia Drusa didn't like him? Wan from her illness she might be, but there could be no mistaking the gentle enthusiasm with which she greeted her masterful brother's plans for a double wedding at the beginning of May, before Gnaeus Mallius Maximus began his march across the Alps. Before the unlucky time. But every time is the unlucky time for me, thought Livia Drusa. However, she did not say it.
4
Wrote Publius Rutilius Rufus to Gaius Marius in June before the news of the capture of Jugurtha and the end of the war in Africa had reached Rome:
We have had a very uneasy winter, and a rather panic-stricken spring. The Germans are definitely on the move, and south at that, into our province along the river Rhodanus. We had been getting urgent letters from our Gallic allies the Aedui since before the end of last year, saying that their unwanted guests the Germans were going to move on. And then in April came the first of the Aeduan deputations to tell us that the Germans had cleaned out the Aeduan and Ambarric granaries, and were loading up their wagons. However, they had given out their destination as Spain, and those in the Senate who think it wiser to play down the threat of the Germans were quick to spread the news. Luckily Scaurus is not of their number, nor is Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus. So pretty soon after Gnaeus Mallius and I began our consulship, there was a strong faction urging that a new army be recruited for any emergency, and Gnaeus Mallius was directed to assemble six new legions.
Rutilius Rufus found himself stiffening as if to ward off a Marian tirade, and smiled ruefully.
Yes, I know, I know! Hold on to your temper, Gaius Marius, and let me put my case before you start jumping up and down upon my poor head and I do not mean that lump of bone and flesh on top of my neck! It should by rights have been me directed to recruit and command this new army; I am well aware of it. I am the senior consul, I have had a long and highly successful military career, and am currently even enjoying some degree of fame because my manual of military practice has been published at last. Whereas my junior colleague, Gnaeus Mallius, is almost completely untried. Well, it's all your fault! My association with you is general knowledge, and your enemies in the House would sooner, I think, that Rome perish under a flood tide of Germans than gratify you and yours in any way. So Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle got up and made a magnificent speech to the effect that I was far too old to lead an army, and that my undeniable talents could be better used if I remained in Rome to govern. They followed him like sheep the leader who betrays them to the slaughter, and passed all the necessary decrees. Why did I not fight them? I hear you ask. Oh, Gaius Marius, I am not you! I just do not have that streak of destructive hatred for them that you have, nor do I have your phenomenal energy. So I contented myself with insisting that Gnaeus Mallius be provided with some truly able and experienced senior legates. And at least this has been done. He has Marcus Aurelius Scaurus to back him up yes, I did say Aurelius, not Aemilius. All he shares in common with our esteemed Leader of the House is a cognomen. However, I suspect that his military ability is considerably better than the famous Scaurus's. At least, for Rome's sake and Gnaeus Mallius's sake, I hope so! And, all told, Gnaeus Mallius has done fairly well. He elected to recruit among the Head Count, and could point to your African army as proof of the Head Count's effectiveness. By the end of April, when the news came that the Germans would be heading south into our Roman province, Gnaeus Mallius had six legions enlisted, all of Roman or Latin Head Count. But then the delegation arrived from the Aedui, and for the first time the House had definite estimates of the actual number of Germans involved in the migration. We discovered, for instance, that the Germans who killed Lucius Cassius in Aquitania we knew they numbered about a quarter of a million were only about a third of the total number, if that. So according to the Aedui, something like eight hundred thousand German warriors, women, and children are at present traveling toward the Gallic coast of the Middle Sea. It mazes the mind, does it not? The House gave Gnaeus Mallius the authority to recruit four more legions, bringing his force up to a total of ten legions plus five thousand cavalry. And by this, the news of the Germans was out all over Italy, try though the House did to calm everyone down. We are very, very worried, especially because we have not so far actually won one engagement against the Germans. From the time of Carbo, our history has been defeat. And there are those, especially among the ordinary people, who are now saying that our famous adage that six good Roman legions can beat a quarter of a million undisciplined barbarians is so much merda. I tell you, Gaius Marius, the whole of Italy is afraid! And I, for one, do not blame Italy. I imagine because of the general dread, several of our Italian Allies reversed their policy of recent years, and have voluntarily contributed troops to Gnaeus Mallius's army. The Samnites have sent a legion of light-armed infantry, and the Marsi have sent a wonderful legion of standard Roman-style infantry. There is also a composite auxiliary legion from Umbria, Etruria, and Picenum. So, as you may imagine, our fellow Conscript Fathers are like the cat which got to the fish very smug and self-satisfied. Of the four extra legions, three are being paid for and kept up by the Italian Allies. That is all positive. But there is an opposite side, of course. We have a frightful shortage of centurions, which means that none of the newly enlisted Head Count troops have undergone a proper training program, and the one legion of Head Count men in the last four legions just put together is almost totally unprepared. His legate Aurelius suggested that Gnaeus Mallius split the experienced centurions up evenly among his seven Head Count legions, and that means no more than 40 percent of the centurions in any one legion have undergone anything like battle conditions. Military tribunes are well and good, but I do not need to tell you that it is the centurions who hold the centuries and cohorts together. Quite frankly, I fear for the result. Gnaeus Mallius is not a bad sort of fellow, but I do not think him capable of waging war against the Germans. This opinion Gnaeus Mallius himself reinforced, when he got up in the House at the end of May and said that he couldn't ensure every man in his force would know what to do on a battlefield! There are always men who don't know what to do on a battlefield, but you don't get up in the House and say so! And what did the House do? It sent orders to Quintus Caepio in Narbo to transfer himself and his army across to the Rhodanus immediately, and join up with Gnaeus Mallius's army when it reaches the Rhodanus. For once the House didn't procrastinate the message went off by mounted courier, and got from Rome to Narbo in less than two weeks. Nor did Quintus Servilius procrastinate in answering! We got his answer yesterday. And what an answer it was. Naturally the senatorial orders had said that Quintus Caepio would subordinate himself and his troops to the imperium of the year's consul. All perfectly normal and aboveboard. Last year's consul may have a proconsular imperium, but in any joint enterprise, the consul of the year takes the senior command. Oh, Gaius Marius, that did not sit well with Quintus Caepio! Did the House honestly think that he a patrician Servilius directly descended from Gaius Servilius Ahala, the savior of Rome would act as the subordinate of an upstart New Man without a single face in an ancestral cupboard, a man who had only reached the consulship because no one of better origins had stood for election? There were consuls and there were consuls, said Quintus Caepio. Yes, I swear to you that he really did say all this! In his year the field of candidates had been respectable, but in this present year the best Rome could do was a broken-down old minor noble (me) and a presumptuous parvenu with more money than taste (Gnaeus Mallius). So, Quintus Caepio's letter ended, he would certainly march at once for the Rhodanus but by the time he got there, he expected to find a senatorial courier waiting for him with the news that he would be the supreme commander in this joint venture. With Gnaeus Mallius working as his subordinate, he was sure, said Quintus Caepio, that all would go superbly.
His hand was beginning to cramp; Rutilius Rufus laid his reed pen down with a sigh, and sat massaging his fingers, staring frowningly into nothing. Presently his eyelids began to droop, and his head fell forward, and he dozed; when he woke with a jerk, his hand at least felt better, so he resumed his writing.
Oh, such a long, long letter! But no one else will give you an honest account of what has happened, and you must know it all. Quintus Caepio's letter had been directed to Scaurus Princeps Senatus rather than to me, and of course you know our beloved Marcus Aemilius Scaurus! He read the whole dreadful letter out to the House with every evidence of ghoulish enjoyment. In fact, he drooled. Oh, and did it put the cat among the pigeons! There were purple faces, flying fists, and a brawl between Gnaeus Mallius and Metellus Piggle-wiggle which I stopped by calling in the lictors from the Curia vestibule an action which Scaurus did not appreciate. Oh, what a day for Mars! A pity we couldn't bottle all that hot air and just blow the Germans away with the most poisonous weapon Rome can manufacture. The upshot of it was that there will indeed be a courier waiting for Quintus Caepio on the banks of the Rhodanus but the new orders will be exactly the same as the old ones. He is to subordinate himself to the legally elected consul of the year, Gnaeus Mallius Maximus. Such a pity the silly fool dowered himself with a cognomen like Maximus, isn't it? A bit like awarding yourself a Grass Crown after your men saved you, not the other way around. Not only is it the height of crassness to give yourself a pat on the back, but if you are not a Fabius, the cognomen Maximus is horribly presumptuous. Of course he maintains his great-grandmother was a Fabia Maxima, and his grandfather used it, but all I know is that his father never did. And I doubt the Fabia Maxima story very much. Anyway, here I am like a war-horse turned out to pasture, itching to be in Gnaeus Mallius's shoes, and burdened instead with earthshaking decisions like whether we can afford to give the State granaries a new coat of pitch inside this year, after paying to equip seven new Head Count legions. Would you believe that with the whole of Rome talking Germans, Germans, Germans, the House argued for eight days about that one? Drive a man insane, it would! I do have an idea, though, and I'm going to implement it. Come victory or defeat in Gaul, I'm going to implement it. With not one man left in all Italy whom I would call a centurion's bootlaces, I am going to recruit drill instructors and other training personnel from the gladiator schools. Capua is full of gladiator schools and the best ones at that so what could be more convenient, considering that Capua is also our base camp for all new troops? If Lucius Tiddlypuss can't hire enough gladiators to put on a good show at his granddad's funeral, hard luck! Rome's need is greater than Lucius Tiddlypuss's, say I! This plan also tells you that I am going to continue to recruit among the Head Count. I'll keep you informed, of course. How goes it in the land of the lotus-eaters, sirens, and enchanted isles? Not managed to put leg-irons on Jugurtha yet? It isn't far off, I'll bet. Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle is in a trifle of a dither these days, actually. He can't make up his mind whether to concentrate on you or on Gnaeus Mallius. Naturally he gave a magnificent speech supporting Quintus Servilius's elevation to commander-in-chief. It gave me inordinate pleasure to sink his case with a few well-placed shafts. Ye gods, Gaius Marius, how they do get me down! Trumpeting the feats of their wretched ancestors when what Rome needs right now is a living, breathing military genius! Hurry up and come home, will you? We need you, for I am not up to battling the whole of the Senate, I just am not.
There was a postscriptum:
There have been a couple of peculiar incidents in Campania, by the way. I don't like them, yet I fail to see why they happened, either. At the beginning of May there was a slave revolt at Nuceria oh, easily put down, and all it really meant was that thirty poor creatures from all over the world were executed. But then three days ago another revolt broke out, this time in a big holding camp outside Capua for low-grade male slaves waiting for buyers in need of a hundred wharf laborers or quarry fodder or treadmill plodders. Almost 250 slaves were involved this time. It was put down at once, as there were several cohorts of recruits in camp around Capua. About fifty of the insurgents perished in the fighting, and the rest were executed forthwith. But I don't like it, Gaius Marius. It's an omen. The gods are against us at the moment; I feel it in my bones.
And a second postscriptum:
Some sad news for you has this very moment come to hand. As my letter to you was already arranged through Marcus Granius of Puteoli to go on his fast packet sailing for Utica at the end of the week, I have volunteered to tell you what has happened. Your much-loved father-in-law, Gaius Julius Caesar, died this afternoon. As you know, he has been suffering from a malignancy in the throat for some time. And this afternoon he fell on his sword. He chose the best alternative, as I'm sure you will agree. No man should linger to be a burden to his loved ones, especially when it detracts from his dignity and integrity as a man. Is there one among us who prefers life to death when life means lying in one's own excrement, or being cleaned of that excrement by a slave? No, when a man cannot command either his bowels or his gorge, it is time to go. I think Gaius Julius would have chosen to go sooner, except that he worried about his younger son, who as I'm sure you know married recently. I went to see Gaius Julius only two days ago, and he managed to whisper through the thing choking him that all his doubts about the suitability of young Gaius Julius's marriage were now allayed, for the beautiful Aurelia the darling of my own heart, I admit was just the right wife for his boy. So it is ave atque vale, Gaius Julius Caesar.
At the very end of June the consul Gnaeus Mallius Maximus left on the long march north and west, his two sons on his personal staff, and all twenty-four of the elected tribunes of the soldiers for that year distributed among seven of his ten legions. Sextus Julius Caesar, Marcus Livius Drusus, and Quintus Servilius Caepio Junior marched with him, as did Quintus Sertorius, taken on as a junior military tribune. Of the three Italian Allied legions, the one sent by the Marsi was the best trained and most soldierly legion of all ten; it was commanded by a twenty-five-year-old Marsic nobleman's son named Quintus Poppaedius Silo under supervision by a Roman legate, of course. Because Mallius Maximus insisted upon lugging enough State-purchased grain to feed his entire force for two months, his baggage train was huge and his progress painfully slow; by the end of the first sixteen days he hadn't even reached the Adriatic at Fanum Fortunae. Talking very hard and passionately, the legate Aurelius then managed to persuade him to leave his baggage train in the escort of one legion, and push on with his nine others, his cavalry, and light baggage only. It had proven very difficult to convince Mallius Maximus that his troops were not going to starve before they got to the Rhodanus, and that sooner or later the heavy baggage would arrive safely. Having a much shorter march over level ground, Quintus Servilius Caepio reached the huge river Rhodanus ahead of Mallius Maximus. He took only seven of his eight legions with him the eighth he shipped to Nearer Spain and no cavalry, having disbanded it the previous year as an unnecessary expense. Despite his orders and the urging of legates, Caepio had refused to move from Narbo until an expected overseas communication from Smyrna came. Nor was he in a good mood; when he could be deflected from complaining about the disgraceful tardiness of this contact between Smyrna and Narbo, he complained about the in-sensitivity of the Senate in thinking that he would yield supreme command of the Grand Army to a mushroom like Mallius Maximus. But in the end, he was obliged to march without his letter, leaving explicit instructions behind in Narbo that it was to be forwarded as soon as it came. Even so, Caepio still beat Mallius Maximus to their target destination comfortably. At Nemausus, a small trading town on the western outskirts of the vast salt marshes around the delta of the Rhodanus, he was met by the Senate's courier, who gave him the Senate's new orders. It had never occurred to Caepio that his letter would fail to move the Conscript Fathers, especially when none other than Scaurus read it out to the House. So when he opened the cylinder and scanned the Senate's brief reply, he was outraged. Impossible! Intolerable! He, a patrician Servilius, tugging his forelock at the whim of Mallius Maximus the New Man? Never! Roman intelligence reported that the Germans were now on their way south, rolling along through the lands of the Celtic Allobroges, inveterate Roman-haters caught in a cleft stick; Rome was the enemy they knew, the Germans the enemy they didn't know. And the Druidic confraternity had been telling every tribe in Gaul for two years now that there wasn't room for the Germans to settle anywhere in Gaul. Certainly the Allobroges were not about to yield enough of their lands to make a new homeland for a people far more numerous than they were themselves. And they were close enough to the Aedui and the Ambarri to know well what a shambles the Germans had made out of the lands of these intimidated tribes. So the Allobroges retreated into the towering foothills of their beloved Alps, and concentrated upon harrying the Germans as much as they could. The Germans breached the Roman province of Gaul-across-the-Alps to the north of the trading post of Vienne late in June, and surged on, unopposed. The whole mass, over three quarters of a million strong, traveled down the eastern bank of the mighty river, for its plains were wider and safer, less exposed to the fierce highland tribes of central Gaul and the Cebenna. Learning of this, Caepio deliberately turned off the Via Domitia at Nemausus, and instead of crossing the delta marshes on the long causeway Ahenobarbus had built, he marched his army northward on the western bank, thus keeping the river between himself and the path of the Germans. It was the middle of the month Sextilis. From Nemausus he had sent a courier hotfoot to Rome with another letter for Scaurus, declaring that he would not take orders from Mallius Maximus, and that was final. After this stand, the only route he could take with honor was west of the river. On the eastern bank of the Rhodanus, some forty miles north of the place where the Via Domitia crossed the river on a long causeway terminating near Arelate, was a Roman trading town of some importance; its name was Arausio. And on the western bank ten miles north of Arausio, Caepio put his army of forty thousand foot soldiers and fifteen thousand noncombatants into a strong camp. And waited for Mallius Maximus to appear on the opposite bank and waited for the Senate to reply to his latest letter. Mallius Maximus arrived ahead of the Senate's reply, at the end of Sextilis. He put his fifty-five thousand infantry and his thirty thousand noncombatants into a heavily fortified camp right on the edge of the river five miles north of Arausio, thus making the river serve as part of his defenses as well as his water source. The ground just to the north of the camp was ideal for a battle, thought Mallius Maximus, envisioning the river as his greatest protection. This was his first mistake. His second mistake was to detach his five thousand cavalry from his camp, and send them to act as his advance guard thirty miles further north. And his third mistake was to appoint his most able legate, Aurelius, to command the horse, thereby depriving himself of Aurelius's counsel. All the mistakes were part of Mallius Maximus's grand strategy; he intended to use Aurelius and the cavalry as a brake on the German advance not by offering battle, but by offering the Germans their first sight of Roman resistance. For Mallius Maximus wanted to treat, not fight, hoping to turn the Germans peacefully back into central Gaul, well away from southward progress through the Roman province. All the earlier battles fought between the Germans and Rome had been forced on the Germans by Rome, and only after the Germans had indicated they were willing to turn back peacefully from Roman territory. So Mallius Maximus had high hopes for his grand strategy, and they were not without foundation. However, his first task was to get Caepio from the west bank of the river to the east bank. Still smarting from the insulting, insensitive letter from Caepio that Scaurus had read out in the House, Mallius Maximus dictated a curt and undisguised direct order to Caepio: get yourself and your army across the river and inside my camp at once. He gave it to a team of oarsmen in a boat, thus ensuring quick delivery. Caepio used the same boat to send Mallius Maximus his answer. Which said with equal curtness that he, a patrician Servilius, would not take orders from any pretentious mushroom of a tradesman, and would stay right where he was, on the western bank. Said Mallius Maximus's next directive:
As your supreme commander in the field, I repeat my order to transfer yourself and your army across the river without an hour's delay. Please regard this, my second such order, as my last. Should you persist in defying me, I shall institute legal proceedings against you in Rome. The charge will be high treason, and your own high-flown actions will have convicted you.
Caepio responded with an equally litigious reply:
I do not admit that you are the supreme commander in the field. By all means institute treason proceedings against me. I will certainly be instituting treason proceedings against you. Since we both know who will win, I demand that you turn the supreme command over to me forthwith.
Mallius Maximus replied with even greater hauteur. And so it went until midway through September, when six senators arrived from Rome, utterly exhausted by the speed and discomfort of their trip. Rutilius Rufus, the consul in Rome, had pushed successfully to send this embassage, but Scaurus and Metellus Numidicus had managed to pull the embassage's teeth by refusing to allow the inclusion of any senator of consular status or real political clout. The most senior of the six senators was a mere praetor of moderately noble background, none other than Rutilius Rufus's brother-in-law, Marcus Aurelius Cotta. Scant hours after the embassage arrived at Mallius Maximus's camp, Cotta at least understood the gravity of the situation. So Cotta went to work with great energy and a passion normally alien to him, concentrating upon Caepio. Who remained obdurate. A visit to the cavalry camp thirty miles to the north sent him back to the fray with redoubled determination, for the legate Aurelius had led him under cover to a high hill, from which he was able to see the leading edge of the German advance. Cotta looked, and turned white. "You ought to be inside Gnaeus Mallius's camp," he said. "If a fight was what we wanted, yes," said Aurelius, his calm unimpaired, for he had been looking at the German advance for days, and had grown used to the sight. “Gnaeus Mallius thinks we can repeat earlier successes, which have always been diplomatic. When the Germans have fought, it's only been because we pushed them to it. I have absolutely no intention of starting anything and that will mean, I'm sure, that they won't start anything either. I have a team of competent interpreters here, and I've been indoctrinating them for days as to what I want to say when the Germans send their chiefs to parley, as I'm sure they will, once they realize that there's a Roman army of huge size waiting for them." "But surely they know that now!" said Cotta. "I doubt it," said Aurelius, unperturbed. "They don't move in a military fashion, you know. If they've heard of scouts, they certainly haven't bothered to employ them so far. They just roll on! Taking, it seems to Gnaeus Mallius and me, whatever comes to them when it comes." Cotta turned his horse. "I must get back to Gnaeus Mallius as soon as possible, cousin. Somehow we've got to get that stiff-necked imbecile Caepio across the river, or we may as well not even have his army in the vicinity." "I agree," said Aurelius. "However, Marcus Aurelius of the Cottae, if feasible I would like you to return to me here the moment I send you word that a German delegation has arrived to parley. With your five colleagues! The Germans will be impressed that the Senate has sent six representatives all the way from Rome to treat with them." He smiled wryly. "We certainly won't let them know that the Senate has sent six representatives all the way from Rome to treat with our own fools of generals!"
The stiff-necked imbecile Quintus Servilius Caepio was rather inexplicably in a much better mood and more prone to listen to Cotta when he had himself rowed across the Rhodanus the next day. "Why the sudden lightheartedness, Quintus Servilius?" asked Cotta, puzzled. "I've just had a letter from Smyrna," said Caepio. "A letter I should have had months ago." But instead of going on to explain what any letter from Smyrna might contain to make him so much happier, Caepio got down to business. "All right," he said, "I'll come across to the east bank tomorrow." He pointed to his map with an ivory wand topped by a gold eagle he had taken to carrying to indicate the high degree of his imperium; he still had not consented to see Mallius Maximus in person. "Here is where I'll cross." ' 'Wouldn't it be more prudent to cross south of Arausio?'' asked Cotta dubiously. "Certainly not!" said Caepio. "If I cross to the north, I'll be closer to the Germans." True to his word, Caepio struck camp at dawn the next day, and marched north to a ford twenty miles above Mallius Maximus's fortress, a scant ten miles south of the place where Aurelius was encamped with his cavalry. Cotta and his five senatorial companions rode north too, intending to be in Aurelius's camp when the German chieftains arrived to treat. En route they encountered Caepio on the east bank, most of his army across the river. But the sight that met their eyes struck fresh dismay into their hearts, for all too obviously Caepio was preparing to dig a heavily fortified camp right where he was. "Oh, Quintus Servilius, Quintus Servilius, you can't stay here!" cried Cotta as they sat their horses on a knoll above the new campsite, where scurrying figures dug trenches and piled excavated earth up into ramparts. "Why not?" asked Caepio, raising his brows. "Because twenty miles to the south of you is a camp already made and made large enough to accommodate your legions as well as the ten at present inside it! There is where you belong, Quintus Servilius! Not here, too far away from Aurelius to the north of you and Gnaeus Mallius to the south of you to be of any help to either or they to you! Please, Quintus Servilius, I beg of you! Pitch an ordinary marching camp here tonight, then head south to Gnaeus Mallius in the morning," said Cotta, putting every ounce of urgency he could into his plea. "I said I'd cross the river," Caepio announced, "but I did not give any sort of undertaking as to what I'd do when I did cross the river! I have seven legions, all trained to the top of their bent, and all experienced soldiers. Not only that, but they're men of property true Roman soldiers! Do you seriously think that I would consent to share a camp with the rabble of Rome and the Latin countryside sharecroppers and laborers, men who can't read or write? Marcus Cotta, I would sooner be dead!" "You might well be," said Cotta dryly. "Not my army, and not me," said Caepio, adamant. "I'm twenty miles to the north of Gnaeus Mallius and his loathsome rabble. Which means that I shall encounter the Germans first. And I shall beat them, Marcus Cotta! A solid million barbarians couldn't defeat seven legions of true Roman soldiers! Let that that tradesman Mallius have one iota of the credit? No! Quintus Servilius Caepio will hold his second triumph through the streets of Rome as the sole victor! Mallius will have to stand there looking on." Leaning forward in his saddle, Cotta put his hand out and grasped Caepio's arm. "Quintus Servilius," he said, more earnestly and seriously than he had ever spoken in his entire life, "I beg of you, join forces with Gnaeus Mallius! Which means more to you, Rome victorious or Rome's nobility victorious? Does it matter who wins, so long as Rome wins? This isn't a little border war against a few Scordisci, nor is it a minor campaign against the Lusitani! We are going to need the best and biggest army we've ever fielded, and your contribution to that army is vital! Gnaeus Mallius's men haven't had the time or the training under arms that your men have. Your presence among them will steady them, give them an example to follow. For I say to you very sternly, there will be a battle! I feel it in my bones. No matter how the Germans have behaved in the past, this time is going to be different. They've tasted our blood and liked it, they've felt our mettle and found it weak. Rome is at stake, Quintus Servilius, not Rome's nobility! But if you persist in remaining isolated from the other army, I tell you straight, the future of Rome's nobility will indeed be at stake. In your hands you hold the future of Rome and your own kind. Do the right thing by both, please! March tomorrow to Gnaeus Mallius's camp, and ally yourself with him." Caepio dug his horse in the ribs and moved away, wrenching free of Cotta's grip. "No," he said. "I stay here." So Cotta and his five companions rode on north to the cavalry camp, while Caepio produced a smaller but identical copy of Mallius Maximus's camp, right on the edge of the river. The senators found themselves only just in time, for the German treating party rode into Aurelius's camp slightly after dawn of the next day. There were fifty of them, aged somewhere between forty and sixty, thought the awestruck Cotta, who had never seen men so large not one of them looked to be under six feet in height, and most were six inches taller than that. They rode enormous horses, shaggy-coated and unkempt to Roman eyes, with big hooves skirted in long hair, and manes falling over their mild eyes; none was encumbered by a saddle, but all were bridled. "Their horses are like war elephants," said Cotta. "Only a few," Aurelius answered comfortably. "Most ride ordinary Gallic horses these men take their pick, I suppose." "Look at the young one!" Cotta exclaimed, watching a fellow no older than thirty slide down from his mount's back and stand, his pose superbly confident, gazing about him as if he found nothing he saw remarkable. "Achilles," said Aurelius, undismayed. "I thought the Germans went naked save for a cloak," Cotta said, taking in the sight of leather breeches. "They do in Germania, so they say, but from what we've seen of these Germans so far, they're trousered like the Gauls." Trousered they were, but none wore a shirt in this fine hot weather. Many sported square gold pectorals which sat on their chests from nipple to nipple, and all carried the empty scabbards of long-swords on shoulder baldrics. They wore much gold the pectorals, their helmet ornaments, sword scabbards, belts, baldrics, buckles, bracelets, and necklaces though none wore a Celtic neck torc. Cotta found the helmets fascinating: rimless and pot-shaped, some were symmetrically adorned above the ears with magnificent horns or wings or hollow tubes holding bunches of stiffly upright feathers, while others were fashioned to resemble serpents or dragon heads or hideous birds or pards with gaping jaws. All were clean-shaven and wore their uniformly flaxen hair long, either braided or hanging loose, and they had little if any chest hair. Skins not as pink as Celtic skins, Cotta noted more a pale gold. None was freckled; none had red hair. Their eyes were light blue, and held no grey or green. Even the oldest among them had kept himself in magnificent trim, flat-bellied and warriorlike, no evidence of self-indulgence; though the Romans were not to know it, the Germans killed men who let themselves go to seed. The parley went on through Aurelius's interpreters, who were mostly Aedui and Ambarri, though two or three of them were Germans captured by Carbo in Noricum before he was defeated. What they wanted, the German thanes explained, was a peaceful right-of-way through Gaul-across-the-Alps, for they were going to Spain. Aurelius himself conducted the first phase of the talks, clad in full military-parade armor a torso-shaped silver cuirass, scarlet-plumed Attic helmet of silver, and the double kilt of stiff leather straps called pteryges over a crimson tunic. As a consular he wore a purple cloak lashed to the shoulders of his cuirass, and a crimson girdle ritually knotted and looped around his cuirass just above the waist was the badge of his general's rank. Cotta watched spellbound, now more afraid than he had ever dreamed he could be, even in the depths of despair. For he knew he was looking at Rome's doom. In months to come they haunted his sleep, those German thanes, so remorselessly that he stumbled red-eyed and thick-witted through his days, and even after sheer custom reduced their capacity to keep him wakeful, he would find himself sitting bolt upright in his bed, mouth agape, because they rode their gigantic horses into some less important nightmare. Intelligence reported their numbers at well over three quarters of a million, and that meant at least three hundred thousand gargantuan warriors. Like most men of his eminence, Cotta had seen his share of barbarian warriors, Scordisci and Iapudes, Salassi and Carpetani; but never had he seen men like the Germans. Everyone had deemed the Gauls giants. But they were as ordinary men alongside the Germans. And, worst terror of all, they spelled Rome's doom because Rome did not take them seriously enough to heal the discord between the Orders; how could Rome hope to defeat them when two Roman generals refused to work with each other, and called each other snob and upstart, and damned each other's very soldiers? If Caepio and Mallius Maximus would only work as a team, Rome would field close to one hundred thousand men, and that was an acceptable ratio if morale was high and training complete and leadership competent. Oh, Cotta thought, his bowels churning, I have seen the shape of Rome's fate! For we cannot survive this blond horde. Not when we cannot survive ourselves. Finally Aurelius broke off the talk, and each side stepped back to confer. "Well, we've learned something," said Aurelius to Cotta and the other five senators. "They don't call themselves Germans. In fact, they think of themselves as three separate peoples whom they call the Cimbri, the Teutones, and a rather polyglot third group made up of a number of smaller peoples who have joined up with the Cimbri and the Teutones during their wanderings the Marcomanni, Cherusci, and Tigurini who, according to my German interpreter, are more Celt than German in origins." "Wanderings?" asked Cotta. "How long have they wandered?" "They don't seem to know themselves, but for many years, at least. Perhaps a generation. The young sprig who looks like a barbarian Achilles was a small child when his tribe, the Cimbri, left its homeland." "Do they have a king?" asked Cotta. "No, a council of tribal chieftains, the largest part of which you are currently looking at. However, that same young sprig who looks like a barbarian Achilles is moving up in the council very fast, and his adherents are beginning to call him a king. His name is Boiorix, and he's by far the most truculent among them. He's not really interested in all this begging for our permission to move south he believes might is right, and he's all for abandoning talks with us in favor of just going south no matter what." "Dangerously young to be calling himself a king. I agree, he's trouble," said Cotta. "And who is that man over there?" He unobtrusively indicated a man of about forty who wore a glittering gold pectoral, and several pounds more of gold besides. "That's Teutobod of the Teutones, the chief of their chiefs. He too is beginning to like being called a king, it seems. As with Boiorix, he thinks might is right, and they should simply keep on going south without worrying about whether Rome agrees or not. I don't like it, cousin. Both my German interpreters from Carbo's day tell me that the mood is very different than it was then they've gathered confidence in themselves, and contempt for us." Aurelius chewed at his lip. "You see, they have been living among the Aedui and the Ambarri for long enough now to have learned a lot about Rome. And what they've heard has lulled their fears. Not only that, but so far if you exclude that first engagement of Lucius Cassius's, and who finds exclusion difficult, considering the sequel? they have won every encounter with us. Now Boiorix and Teutobod are telling them they have absolutely no reason to fear us just because we're better armed and better trained. We are like children's bogeys, all imagination and air. Boiorix and Teutobod want war. With Rome a thing of the past, they can wander where they choose, settle where they like." The parley began again, but now Aurelius drew forward his six guests, all clad in togas, escorted by twelve lictors wearing the crimson tunics and broad gold-embossed belts of duty outside Rome itself, and carrying axed fasces. Of course every German eye had noticed them, but now that introductions were performed, they stared at the billowing white robes so unmartial! in wonder. This was what Romans looked like? Cotta alone wore the purple-bordered toga praetexta of the curule magistrate, and it was to him that all the strange-sounding, unintelligible harangues were directed. He held up well under the pressure: proud, aloof, calm, soft-spoken. It seemed no disgrace to a German to become puce with rage, spit gobbets of saliva to punctuate his words, pound the fist of one hand into the palm of the other, but there could be no mistaking the fact that they were puzzled and made ill at ease by the unassailable tranquillity of the Romans. From the beginning of his participation in the parley until its end, Cotta's answer was the same: no. No, the migration could not continue south; no, the German people could not have a right of way through any Roman territory or province; no, Spain was not a feasible destination unless they intended to confine themselves to Lusitania and Cantabria, for the rest of Spain was Roman. Turn north again, was Cotta's constant retort; preferably go home, wherever home might be, but otherwise retreat across the Rhenus into Germania itself, and settle there, among their own peoples. It was not until dusk was fading into night that the fifty German thanes hauled themselves up on their horses and rode away. Last of all to leave were Boiorix and Teutobod, the younger man turning his head over his shoulder to see the Romans for as long as he could. His eyes held neither liking nor admiration. Aurelius is right, he is Achilles, thought Cotta, though at first the parallel's rightness was a mystery. Then he realized that in the young German's handsome face lay all the pigheaded, mercilessly vengeful power of Achilles. Here too was a man who would kick his heels by his ships while the rest of his countrymen died like flies, all for the sake of the merest pinprick in the skin of his honor. And Cotta's heart thudded, despaired; for wasn't that equally true of Quintus Servilius Caepio? There was a full moon two hours after nightfall; freed from the encumbrance of their togas, Cotta and his five very soberly silent companions ate at Aurelius's table, then got ready to ride south. "Wait until morning," begged Aurelius. "This isn't Italy, there are no trusty Roman roads, and you know nothing of the lay of the land. A few hours can't make any difference." "No, I intend to be at Quintus Servilius's camp by dawn," said Cotta, "and try to persuade him yet again to join Gnaeus Mallius. I shall certainly apprise him of what's happened here today. But no matter what Quintus Servilius decides to do, I'm riding all the way back to Gnaeus Mallius tomorrow, and I don't intend to sleep until I've seen him." They shook hands. As Cotta and the senators with their escort of lictors and servants rode away into the dense shadows cast by the moon, Aurelius stood clearly delineated by firelight and moonlight, his arm raised in farewell. I shall not see him again, thought Cotta; a brave man, the very best kind of Roman.
Caepio wouldn't even hear Cotta out, let alone listen to the voice of reason. "Here is where I stay" was all he said. So Cotta rode on without pausing to slake his thirst in Caepio's half-finished camp, determined that he would reach Gnaeus Mallius Maximus by noon at the latest. At dawn, while Cotta and Caepio were failing to see eye to eye, the Germans moved. It was the second day of October, and the weather continued to be fine, no hint of chill in the air. When the front ranks of the German mass came up against Aurelius's camp walls, they simply rolled over them, wave after wave after wave. Aurelius hadn't really understood what was happening; he naturally assumed there would be time to get his cavalry squadrons into the saddle that the camp wall, extremely well fortified, would hold the Germans at bay for long enough to lead his entire force out the back gate of the camp, and to attempt a flanking maneuver. But it was not to be. There were so many fast-moving Germans that they were around all four sides of the camp within moments, and poured over every wall in thousands. Not used to fighting on foot, Aurelius's troopers did their best, but the engagement was more a debacle than a battle. Within half an hour hardly a Roman or an auxiliary was left alive, and Marcus Aurelius Scaurus was taken captive before he could fall on his sword. Brought before Boiorix, Teutobod, and the rest of the fifty who had come to parley, Aurelius conducted himself superbly. His bearing was proud, his manner insufferably haughty; no indignity or pain they could inflict upon him bowed his head or caused him to flinch. So they put him in a wicker cage just large enough to hold him, and made him watch while they built a pyre of the hottest woods, and set fire to it, and let it burn. Aurelius watched, legs straight, no tremor in his hands, no fear on his face, not even clinging to the bars of his little prison. It being no part of their plan that Aurelius should die from inhaling smoke or that he should die too quickly amid vast licks of flame they waited until the pyre had died down, then winched the wicker cage over its very center, and roasted Aurelius alive. But he won, though it was a lonely victory. For he would not permit himself to writhe in agony, or cry out, or let his legs buckle under him. He died every inch the Roman nobleman, determined that his conduct would show them the real measure of Rome, make them take heed of a place which could produce men such as he, a Roman of the Romans. For two days more the Germans lingered by the ruins of the Roman cavalry camp, then the move southward began again, with as little planning as before. When they came level with Caepio's camp they just kept on walking south, thousands upon thousands upon thousands, until the terrified eyes of Caepio's soldiers lost all hope of counting them, and some decided to abandon their armor and swim for the west bank of the river, and safety. But that was a last resort Caepio intended to keep exclusively for himself; he burned all but one of his small fleet of boats, posted a heavy guard all the way down the riverbank, and executed any men who tried to escape. Marooned in a vast sea of Germans, the fifty-five thousand soldiers and noncombatants in Caepio's camp could do nothing but wait to see if the flood would pass them by unharmed. By the sixth day of October, the German front ranks had reached the camp of Mallius Maximus, who preferred not to keep his army pent up within its walls. So he formed up his ten legions and marched them out onto the ground just to the north before the Germans, clearly visible, could surround his camp. He arrayed his troops across the flat ground between the riverbank and the first rise in the ground which heralded the tips of the tentacles of the Alps, even though their foothills were almost a hundred miles away to the east. The legions stood, all facing north, side by side for a distance of four miles, Mallius Maximus's fourth mistake; not only could he easily be outflanked since he possessed no cavalry to protect his exposed right but his men were stretched too thin. Not one word had come to him of conditions to the north, of Aurelius or of Caepio, and he had no one to disguise and send out into the German hordes, for all the available interpreters and scouts had been sent north with Aurelius. Therefore he could do nothing except wait for the Germans to arrive. Logically his command position was atop the highest tower of his fortified camp wall, so there he positioned himself, with his personal staff mounted and ready to gallop his orders to the various legions; among his personal staff were his own two sons, and the youthful son of Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle, the Piglet. Perhaps because Mallius Maximus deemed Quintus Poppaedius Silo's legion of Marsi best disciplined and trained or perhaps because he deemed its men more expendable than Romans, even Roman rabble it stood furthest east of the line, on the Roman right, and devoid of any cavalry protection. Next to it was a legion recruited early in the year commanded by Marcus Livius Drusus, who had inherited Quintus Sertorius as his second-in-charge. Then came the Samnite auxiliaries, and next in line another Roman legion of early recruits; the closer the line got to the river, the more ill trained and inexperienced the legions became, and the more tribunes of the soldiers were there to stiffen them. Caepio Junior's legion of completely raw troops was stationed along the riverbank, with Sextus Caesar, also commanding raw troops, next to him. There seemed to be a slight element of plan about the German attack, which commenced two hours after dawn on the sixth day of October, more or less simultaneously upon Caepio's camp and upon Mallius Maximus's line of battle. None of Caepio's fifty-five thousand men survived when the Germans all around them simply turned inward on the three landward perimeters of the camp and spilled into it until the crush of men was so great the wounded were trampled underfoot along with the dead. Caepio himself didn't wait. As soon as he saw that his soldiers had no hope of keeping the Germans out, he hustled himself down to the water, boarded his boat, and had his oarsmen make for the western bank of the Rhodanus at racing speed. A handful of his abandoned men tried to swim to safety, but there were so many Germans hacking and hewing that no Roman had the time or the space to shed his twenty-pound shirt of mail or even untie his helmet, so all those who attempted the swim drowned. Caepio and his boat crew were virtually the sole survivors. Mallius Maximus did little better. Fighting valiantly against gargantuan odds, the Marsi perished almost to the last man, as did Drusus's legion fighting next to the Marsi. Silo fell, wounded in the side, and Drusus was knocked senseless by a blow from the hilt of a German sword not long after his legion engaged; Quintus Sertorius tried to rally the men from horseback, but there was no holding the German attack. As fast as they were chopped down, fresh Germans sprang in to replace them, and the supply was endless. Sertorius fell too, wounded in the thigh at just the place where the great nerves to the lower leg were most vulnerable; that the spear shore through the nerves and stopped just short of the femoral artery was nothing more nor less than the fortunes of war. The legions closest to the river turned and took to the water, most of them managing to doff their heavy gear before wading in, and so escape by swimming the Rhodanus to its far side. Caepio Junior was the first to yield to temptation, but Sextus Caesar was cut down by one of his own soldiers when he tried desperately to stop their retreat, and subsided into the melee with a mangled left hip. In spite of Cotta's protests, the six senators had been ferried across to the western bank before the battle began; Mallius Maximus had insisted that as civilian observers they should leave the field and observe from some place absolutely safe. "If we go down, you must survive to bring the news to the Senate and People of Rome," he said. It was Roman policy to spare the lives of all they defeated, for able-bodied warriors fetched the highest prices as slaves destined for labor, be it in mines, on wharves, in quarries, on building projects. But neither Celts nor Germans spared the lives of the men they fought, preferring to enslave those who spoke their languages, and only in such numbers as their unstructured way of life demanded. So when, after a brief inglorious hour of battle, the German host stood victorious on the field, its members passed among the thousands of Roman bodies and killed any they found still alive. Luckily this act wasn't disciplined or concerted; had it been, not one of the twenty-four tribunes of the soldiers would have survived the battle of Arausio. Drusus lay so deeply unconscious he seemed dead to every German who looked him over, and all of Quintus Poppaedius Silo showing from beneath a pile of Marsic dead was so covered in blood he too went undiscovered. Unable to move because his leg was completely paralyzed, Quintus Sertorius shammed dead. And Sextus Caesar, entirely visible, labored so loudly for breath and was so blue in the face that no German who noticed him could be bothered dispatching a life so clearly ending of its own volition. The two sons of Mallius Maximus perished as they galloped this way and that bearing their distracted father's orders, but the son of Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle, young Piglet, was made of sterner stuff; when he saw the inevitability of defeat, he hustled the nerveless Mallius Maximus and some half-dozen aides who stood with him across the top of the camp ramparts to the river's edge, and there put them into a boat. Metellus Piglet's actions were not entirely dictated by motives of self-preservation, for he had his share of courage; simply, he preferred to turn that courage in the direction of preserving the life of his commander.
It was all over by the fifth hour of the day. And then the Germans turned north again, and walked the thirty miles back to where their many thousands of wagons stood all around the camp of the dead Aurelius. In Mallius Maximus's camp and in Caepio's they had made a wonderful discovery: huge stores of wheat, plus other foodstuffs, and sufficient vehicles and mules and oxen to carry all of it away. Gold, money, clothing, even arms and armor didn't attract them in the least. But Mallius Maximus's and Caepio's food was irresistible, so that they plundered the last rasher of bacon and the last pot of honey. And some hundreds of amphorae of wine. One of the German interpreters, captured when Aurelius's camp was overwhelmed and restored to the bosom of his Cimbri people, had not been back among his own kind more than a very few hours when he realized that he had been among the Romans far too long to have any love left for barbarian living. So when no one was looking, he stole a horse and headed south for Arausio town. His route passed well to the east of the river, for he had no wish to encounter the aftermath of the terrible Roman defeat, even by smelling its unburied corpses. On the ninth day of October, three days after the battle, he walked his tired steed down the cobbled main street of the prosperous town, looking for someone to whom he could tell his news, but finding no one. The whole populace seemed to have fled before the advance of the Germans. And then at the far end of the main street he spied the villa of Arausio's most important personage a Roman citizen, of course and there he discerned activity. Arausio's most important personage was a local Gaul named Marcus Antonius Meminius because he had been given the coveted citizenship by a Marcus Antonius, for his services to the army of Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus seventeen years before. Exalted by this distinction and helped by the patronage of the Antonius family to gain trade concessions between Gaul-across-the-Alps and Roman Italy, Marcus Antonius Meminius had prospered exceedingly. Now the chief magistrate of the town, he had tried to persuade its people to stay in their houses at least long enough to see whether the battle being fought to the north went for or against Rome. Not succeeding, he had nonetheless elected to stay himself, merely acting prudently by sending his children off in the care of their pedagogue, burying his gold, and concealing the trapdoor to his wine cellar by moving a large stone slab across it. His wife announced that she preferred to stay with him than go with the children, and so the two of them, attended by a loyal handful of servants, had listened to the brief cacophony of anguish which had floated on the heavy air between Mallius Maximus's camp and the town. When no one came, Roman or German, Meminius had sent one of his slaves to find out what had happened, and was still reeling with the news when the first of the senior Roman officers to save their own skins came into town. They were Gnaeus Mallius Maximus and his handful of aides, behaving more like drugged animals on their way to ritual slaughter than high Roman military men; this impression of Meminius's was heightened by the behavior of Metellus Numidicus's son, who herded them with the sharpness and bite of a small dog. Meminius and his wife came out personally to lead the party into their villa, then gave them food and wine, and tried to obtain a coherent account of what had happened. But all their attempts failed; for the only rational one, young Metellus Piglet, had developed a speech impediment so bad he couldn't get two words out, and Meminius and his wife had no Greek, and only the most basic Latin. More dragged themselves in over the next two days, but pitifully few, and no ranker soldiers, though one centurion was able to say that there were some thousands of survivors on the west bank of the river, wandering dazed and leaderless. Caepio came in last of all, accompanied by his son, Caepio Junior, whom he had found on the western bank as he came down it toward Arausio. When Caepio learned that Mallius Maximus was sheltering inside Meminius's house, he refused to stay, electing instead to press onward to Rome, and take his son with him. Meminius gave him two gigs harnessed to four-mule teams, and sent him on his way with food and drivers. Bowed over with grief at the death of his sons, Mallius Maximus was unable until the third day to ask whereabouts the six senators were; until then Meminius hadn't even known of them, but when Mallius Maximus pressed for a search party to find them, Meminius demurred, afraid that the Germans were still in possession of the field of battle, and more concerned with making sure that he and his wife and all his shocked guests were readied for a quick flight to safety. Such was the situation when the German interpreter rode into Arausio and located Meminius. It was immediately clear to Meminius that the man was big with news of some kind, but unfortunately neither of them could understand the other's Latin, and it did not occur to Meminius to ask Mallius Maximus to see the man. Instead, he gave him shelter, and told him to wait until someone came with both the language and the state of mind to interview him.
Under Cotta's leadership, the missing senatorial embassage had ventured back across the river in their boat the moment the Germans turned back into the north, and began to search that awful carnage for survivors. With their lictors and servants counted in, they numbered twenty-nine all told, and labored without regard for their safety should the Germans return. As the time passed, no one came to help them. Drusus had come to his senses with darkness, lain half-conscious through the night, and with the dawn recovered enough to crawl in search of water, his only thought; the river was three miles away, the camp almost as far, so he struck off to the east, hoping to find a stream where the ground began to rise. Not more than a few feet away he found Quintus Sertorius, who flapped a hand at sight of him. "Can't move"," said Sertorius, licking cracked lips. "Leg dead. Waiting for someone. Thought it would be German." "Thirsty," croaked Drusus. "Find water, then be back." The dead were everywhere, acres upon acres of them, but they chiefly lay behind the route of Drusus's unsteady walk in search of water, for he had fallen in the true front line at the very beginning of the battle, and the Romans had not advanced an inch, only fallen back and back and back. Like himself, Sertorius had remained in the front line; had he lain among the tumbled heaps and mounds of Roman dead scant feet to his rear, Drusus would never have seen him. His heavy Attic helmet gone, Drusus was bareheaded; a little puff of wind came and blew one single strand of hair across the great lump above his right eye, and so swollen, so stretched was the skin and tissue beneath, so bloodied the frontal bone, that the touch of that single strand of hair brought Drusus to his knees in agony. But the will to live is very strong. Drusus climbed sobbing to his feet and continued his walk east, and even remembered that he had nothing in which to carry water, and that there would be some like Sertorius in sore need of water. Groaning with the immensity of the pain produced by bending over, he pulled the helmets off two dead Marsic soldiers and walked on, carrying the helmets by their chin straps. And there among the field of Marsic dead stood a little water donkey, blinking its gentle, long-lashed eyes at the carnage, but unable to move away because its halter was wound round and round the arm of a man buried beneath other corpses. It had tried to tug itself free, but only succeeded in tightening the rope until tubes of blackening flesh protruded between the coils. Still wearing his dagger, Drusus cut the rope where it entered the lifeless arm and tied it to his sword belt, so that if he fainted the donkey would not be able to get away. But at the moment he found it, it was very glad to see a living man, and stood patiently while Drusus slaked his thirst, then was quite happy to follow wherever Drusus led. On the outskirts of the huge confusion of bodies around the water donkey were two moving legs; amid renewed groans from Drusus that the donkey echoed sadly, Drusus managed to shove sufficient of the dead aside to uncover a Marsic officer who was still very much alive. His bronze cuirass was stove in along its right side just below and in front of the man's right arm, and a hole in the middle of the great dent oozed pink fluid rather than blood. Working as delicately as he could, Drusus got the officer out of the press of bodies onto a patch of trampled grass and began to unbuckle the cuirass where its front and back plates met along the left side. The officer's eyes were closed, hut a pulse in his neck was beating strongly, and when Drusus pried the shell of the cuirass off the chest and abdomen it had been designed to protect, he cried out sharply. Then, "Go easy!" said an irritable voice in purest Latin. Drusus stopped for a moment, then resumed unbuckling the leather underdress. "Lie still, you fool!" he said. "I'm only trying to help. Want some water first?" "Water," echoed the Marsic officer. Drusus fed it to him out of a helmet, and was rewarded with the unshuttering of two yellow-green eyes, a sight that reminded him of snakes; the Marsi were snake worshipers, and danced with them, and charmed them, and even kissed them tongue to tongue. Easy to believe, looking at those eyes. "Quintus Poppaedius Silo," the Marsic officer said. "Some irrumator about eight feet tall caught me on the hop.'' He closed his eyes; two tears rolled down his bloodied cheeks. "My men they're all dead, aren't they?" "Afraid so," said Drusus gently. "Along with mine and everybody else's, it seems. My name is Marcus Livius Drusus. Now hold on, I'm going to lift your jerkin off." The wound had stanched itself, thanks to the woolen tunic the force of the German long-sword had pushed into its narrow mouth; Drusus could feel broken pieces of ribs moving under his hands, but cuirass, leather jerkin, and ribs had managed to prevent the blade invading the interior of chest and belly. "You'll live," said Drusus. "Can you get up if I help you? I have a comrade back in my own legion who needs me. So it's either stay here and make your own way to me when you can, or come with me now on your own two feet." Another lone strand of hair blew across his pulped right forehead, and he screamed with the pain of it. Quintus Poppaedius Silo considered the situation. "You'll never cope with me in your state," he said. "See if you can give me my dagger, I'm going to cut a bit off the bottom of my tunic and use it to bind this gash. Can't afford to start bleeding again in this Tartarus." Drusus gave him the dagger and moved off with his donkey. "Where will I find you?" Silo asked. "Over yonder, next legion down," said Drusus. Sertorius was still conscious. He drank gratefully, then managed to sit up. His wound was actually the worst of the three of them, and clearly he could not be moved until Drusus got help from Silo. So for the time being Drusus sank down next to Sertorius and rested, moving only when Silo appeared an hour later. The sun was getting up into the sky, and it was growing hot. "The two of us will have to move Quintus Sertorius far enough away from the dead to give his leg less chance of being infected," said Silo. "Then I suggest we rig up some sort of shade shelter for him, and see if there's anyone else alive out here." All this was done with frustrating slowness and too much pain, but eventually Sertorius was made as comfortable as possible, and Drusus and Silo set off on their quest. They hadn't gone very far when Drusus became nauseated, and sank down in a retching huddle on the battered dusty ground, each convulsion of diaphragm and stomach coming amid frantic screams of agony. In little better case, Silo subsided near him, and the donkey, still tethered to Drusus's belt, waited patiently. Then Silo rolled over and inspected Drusus's head. He grunted. "If you can stand it, Marcus Livius, I think your pain might be much less if I broke open that lump with my knife and let some of the fluid out. Are you game?" "I'd brave the hydra-headed monster if I thought it might fix me up!" gasped Drusus. Before he applied the tip of his dagger to the lump, Silo muttered some charm or incantation in an ancient tongue Drusus could not identify; not Oscan, for that he understood well. A snake spell, that's what he's whispering, thought Drusus, and felt oddly comforted. The pain was blinding. Drusus fainted. And while he was unconscious Silo squeezed as much of the dammed-up blood and fluid out of the lump as he could, mopping up the mess with a chunk he tore off Drusus's tunic, and then helping himself to another chunk as Drusus stirred, came around. "Feel any better?" asked Silo. "Much," said Drusus. "If I bind it, you'll only hurt more, so here, use this to mop up the muck when it blinds you. Sooner or later it will stop draining." Silo glanced up into the pitiless sun. "We've got to move into some shade, or we won't last and that means young Sertorius won't last either," he said, getting to his feet. The closer they staggered to the river, the more signs that men lived among the carnage began to appear; faint cries for help, movements, moans. "This is an offense against the gods," said Silo grimly. "No battle was ever worse planned. We were executed! I curse Gnaeus Mallius Maximus! May the great light-bearing Snake wrap himself around Gnaeus Mallius Maximus's dreams!" "I agree, it was a fiasco, and we were no better generaled than Cassius's men at Burdigala. But the blame has to be apportioned fairly, Quintus Poppaedius. If Gnaeus Mallius is guilty, how much more so is Quintus Servilius Caepio?" Oh, how that hurt to say! His wife's father, no less. "Caepio? What did he have to do with it?" asked Silo. The head wound was feeling much better; Drusus found he could turn to look at Silo easily. "Don't you know?" he asked. "What does any Italian ever know about Roman command decisions?" Silo spat derisively on the ground. "We Italians are just here to fight. We don't get a say in how we are to fight, Marcus Livius." "Well, since the day he arrived here from Narbo, Quintus Servilius has refused to work with Gnaeus Mallius." Drusus shivered. "He wouldn't take orders from a New Man." Silo stared at Drusus; yellow-green eyes fixed on black eyes. "You mean Gnaeus Mallius wanted Quintus Servilius here in this camp?" "Of course he did! So did the six senators from Rome. But Quintus Servilius wouldn't serve under a New Man." "You're saying it was Quintus Servilius who kept the two armies separate?" Silo couldn't seem to believe what he was hearing. "Yes, it was Quintus Servilius." It had to be said. "He is my father-in-law, I am married to his only daughter. How can I bear it? His son is my best friend, and married to my sister fighting here today with Gnaeus Mallius dead, I suppose." The fluid Drusus mopped from his face was mostly tears. "Pride, Quintus Poppaedius! Stupid, useless pride!'' Silo had stopped walking. "Six thousand soldiers of the Marsi and two thousand Marsic servants died here yesterday now you tell me it was because some overbred Roman idiot bore a grudge against some underbred Roman idiot?" The breath hissed between Silo's teeth, he shook with rage. "May the great light-bearing Snake have them both!" "Some of your men may be alive," said Drusus, not to excuse his superiors, but in an effort to comfort this man, whom he knew he liked enormously. And he was awash in pain, pain that had nothing to do with any physical wound, pain all bound up in a terrible grief. He Marcus Livius Drusus who had not known any of life's realities until now wept for shame at the thought of a Rome led by men who could cause so much pain all for the sake of a class-conscious quarrel. "No, they're dead," said Silo. "Why do you think it took me so long to join you where Quintus Sertorius lay? I went among them looking. Dead. All dead!" "And mine," said Drusus, weeping still. "We took the brunt of it on the right, and not a cavalry trooper to be seen." It was shortly after that they saw the senatorial party in the distance, and called for help.
Marcus Aurelius Cotta brought the tribunes of the soldiers into Arausio himself, plodding the five miles behind oxen because the pace and the kind of cart made it an easier journey; his fellows he left trying to organize some kind of order out of the chaos. Marcus Antonius Meminius had managed to persuade some of the local Gallic tribesmen who lived on farmsteads around Arausio to go out to the battlefield and do what they could to help. "But," said Cotta to Meminius when he arrived at the local magistrate's villa, "this is the evening of the third day, and somehow we have to dispose of the dead." "The townspeople are gone, and the farmers convinced the Germans will be back you've no idea how hard I had to talk to get anyone to go out there and help you," said Meminius. "I don't know where the Germans are," said Cotta, "and I can't work out why they headed back into the north. But so far, I haven't seen a sign of them. Unfortunately I don't have anyone to send out to scout, the battlefield is more important." "Oh!" Meminius clapped his hand to his brow. "A fellow came in about four hours ago, and from what I can gather I can't understand him he's one of the German interpreters who were attached to the cavalry camp. He has Latin, but his accent is too thick for me. Would you talk to him? He might be willing to scout for you." So Cotta sent for the German, and what he learned changed everything. "There has been a terrible quarrel, the council of thanes is split, and the three peoples have gone their separate ways," the man said. "A quarrel among the thanes, you mean?" asked Cotta. "Well, between Teutobod of the Teutones and Boiorix of the Cimbri, at least in the beginning," said the interpreter. "The warriors went back to get the wagons started, and the council met to divide the spoils. There was much wine taken from the three camps of the Romans, and the council drank it. Then Teutobod said he had had a dream while he rode back to the wagons of his people, and was visited by the great god Ziu, and Ziu told him that if his people kept marching south into the Roman lands, the Romans would inflict a defeat upon them that would see all the warriors, the women, and the children slain or sold into slavery. So Teutobod said he was going to take the Teutones to Spain through the lands of the Gauls, not the lands of the Romans. But Boiorix took great exception to this, accused Teutobod of cowardice, and announced that the Cimbri would go south through the Roman lands, no matter what the Teutones did.'' "Are you sure of all this?" Cotta asked, hardly able to believe it. "How do you know? From hearsay? Or were you there?" "I was there, dominus." "Why were you there? How were you there?" "I was waiting to be taken to the Cimbri wagons, since I am Cimbric. And they were all very drunk, so no one noticed me. I found I did not want to be a German anymore, so I thought I would learn what I could, and escape." "Go on, then, man!" said Cotta eagerly. "Well, the rest of the thanes joined in the argument, and then Getorix, who leads the Marcomanni and Cherusci and Tigurini, proposed that the matter be settled by remaining among the Aedui and Ambarri. But no one except his own people wanted to do that. The Teutonic thanes sided with Teutobod, and the Cimbric thanes with Boiorix. So the council ended yesterday with the three peoples all wanting different things. Teutobod has ordered the Teutones to travel into far Gaul, and make their way to Spain through the lands of the Cardurci and Petrocorii. Getorix and his people are going to stay among the Aedui and Ambarri. And Boiorix is going to lead the Cimbri to the other side of the great river Rhodanus, and travel to Spain along the outskirts of the Roman lands, rather than through them." "So that's why there's been no sign of them!" said Cotta. "Yes, dominus. They will not be coming south through the Roman lands," said the German. Back went Cotta to Marcus Antonius Meminius, and told him the news, smiling broadly. "Spread the word, Marcus Meminius, and as quickly as possible! For you must get all those bodies burned, otherwise your ground and your water will be contaminated, and disease will do more damage to the people of Arausio than the Germans could," said Cotta. He frowned, chewed his lip. "Where is Quintus Servilius Caepio?" "Already on his way to Rome, Marcus Aurelius." "What?" “He left with his son to bring the news to Rome as quickly as he could," said Meminius, puzzled. "Oh, I'll just bet he did!" said Cotta grimly. "Is he going by road?" "Of course, Marcus Aurelius. I gave him four-mule gigs out of my own stables." Cotta stood up, bone tired but filled with new vigor. "I will bring the news of Arausio to Rome," he said. "If I have to grow wings and fly, I'll beat Quintus Servilius, I swear it! Marcus Meminius, give me the best horse you can find. I start for Massilia at the crack of dawn." He rode at the gallop for Massilia, unescorted, commandeered a fresh horse in Glanum, and another in Aquae Sextiae, and got to Massilia seven hours after leaving Arausio. The great seaport founded by the Greeks centuries before had heard not one word about the great battle fought four days earlier; Cotta found the city so sleek and Greek, so white and bright in a fever of apprehension at the coming of the Germans. The house of the ethnarch pointed out to him, Cotta walked in with all the arrogance and haste of a Roman curule magistrate on urgent business. As Massilia enjoyed ties of friendship with Rome without submitting to Roman rule, Cotta could have been politely shown the door. But of course he was not. Especially after the ethnarch and a few of his councillors living close by had heard what Cotta had to say. "I want the fastest ship you've got, and the best sailors and oarsmen in Massilia," he said. "There's no cargo to slow the ship down, so I'll carry two spare teams of oarsmen in case we have to row against the wind and into a head sea. Because I swear to you, Ethnarch Aristides, that I will be in Rome in three days, if it means rowing the whole way! We're not going to hug the coast we're going. in as straight a line for Ostia as the best navigator in Massilia can sail. When's the next tide?" “You will have your ship and your crew by dawn , Marcus Aurelius, and that happens to coincide with the tide," said the ethnarch gently. He coughed with great delicacy. "Who will be paying?" Typical Massiliote Greek, thought Cotta, but didn't say so aloud. "Write me out a bill," he said. "The Senate and People of Rome will be paying." The bill was written at once; Cotta looked down at the outrageous price and grunted. "It's a tragedy," he said to Ethnarch Aristides, "when bad news costs enough to fight another war against the Germans. I don't suppose you'd lop a few drachmae off?" "I agree, it is a tragedy," said the ethnarch smoothly. "However, business is business. The price stands, Marcus Aurelius. Take it or leave it." "I'll take it," said Cotta.
Caepio and his son didn't bother to take the detour a visit to Massilia would have meant for a road traveler. No one knew better than Caepio veteran of a year in Narbo and a year in Spain when he had been praetor that the winds always blew the wrong way across the Sinus Gallicus. He would take the Via Domitia up the valley of the Druentia River, cross into Italian Gaul through the Mons Genava Pass, and hurry as fast as he could down the Via Aemilia and the Via Flaminia. Hopefully he could average seventy miles a day if he managed to commandeer decent animals often enough, and he expected his proconsular imperium to do that for him. It did; as the miles flew by Caepio began to feel confident that he would beat even the senatorial courier to Rome. So rapid had his crossing of the Alps been that the Vocontii, always on the lookout for vulnerable Roman travelers on the Via Domitia, were unable to organize an attack on the two galloping gigs. By the time he reached Ariminum and the end of the Via Aemilia, Caepio knew he would make it from Arausio to Rome in seven days, assisted by good roads and plenty of fresh mules. He began to relax. Exhausted he might be, a headache of huge proportions he might have, but his version of what had happened at Arausio would be the first version Rome heard, and that was nine tenths of the battle. When Fanum Fortunae appeared and the gigs turned onto the Via Flaminia for the crossing of the Apennines and the descent into the Tiber Valley, Caepio knew he had won. His was the version of Arausio Rome would believe. But Fortune had a greater favorite; Marcus Aurelius Cotta sailed the Sinus Gallicus from Massilia to Ostia in winds that veered between perfect and nonexistent, a better passage by far than could have been predicted. When the wind dropped, the professional oarsmen took their places in the outriggers, the hortator started to mark the stroke on his drum, and thirty muscled backs bent to the task. It was a small ship, built for speed rather than cargo, and looked suspiciously like a Massiliote fighting ship to Cotta, though the Massiliotes were not supposed to have any without Roman approval. Its two banks of oars, fifteen to a side, were housed in outriggers surmounted by decks that could easily have been fenced with a row of good stout shields and turned into fighting platforms in the twinkling of an eye, and the crane rigged on the afterdeck seemed rather haphazard in construction; perhaps, thought Cotta, a hefty catapult normally sits there. Piracy was a profitable industry, and rife from one end of the Middle Sea to the other. However, he was not the man to question a gift from Fortune, so Cotta nodded blandly when the captain explained that he specialized in passengers, and that the outrigger decks were a nice place for the passengers to stretch their legs, since cabin accommodation was a bit primitive. Before they sailed Cotta had been persuaded by the captain that two extra teams of oarsmen were excessive, for his men were the best in the business and would keep up a top pace with only one extra team. Now Cotta was glad he had agreed, for they were the lighter in weight because they carried fewer men, and the wind provided enough puff to rest both teams of rowers just when it looked as if exhaustion was going to set in. The ship had sailed out of Massilia's magnificent harbor at dawn on the eleventh day of October, and came to anchor in Ostia's dismally poor harbor at dawn on the day before the Ides, exactly three days later. And three hours later Cotta walked into the consul Publius Rutilius Rufus's house, scattering clients before him like hens before a fox. "Out!" he said to the client seated in the chair at Rutilius Rufus's desk, and threw himself wearily into the chair as the startled client scuttled to the door.
By noon the Senate had been summoned to an emergency meeting in the Curia Hostilia; Caepio and his son were at that same moment trotting briskly down the last stretch of the Via Aemilia. "Leave the doors open," said Publius Rutilius Rufus to the chief clerk. "This is one meeting the People must hear. And I want it taken down verbatim and transcribed for the records." Given the short notice, it was a fairly full House; for in the unfathomable way that news has of percolating ahead of official dissemination, the rumor was already spreading through the city that there had been a great disaster against the Germans in Gaul. The well of the Comitia near the foot of the Curia Hostilia steps was rapidly filling with people; so were the steps and all the level spaces nearby. Fully privy to Caepio's letters protesting against Mallius Maximus as well as demanding the supreme authority, and fearing a fresh round of arguments, the Conscript Fathers were edgy. Not having heard in weeks from Caepio, the doughty Marcus Aemilius Scaurus was at a disadvantage, and knew it. So when the consul Rutilius Rufus commanded that the House doors remain open, Scaurus made no move to insist they be closed. Nor did Metellus Numidicus. All eyes were riveted on Cotta, given a chair in the front row in close proximity to the dais on which stood his brother-in-law Rutilius Rufus's ivory chair. "Marcus Aurelius Cotta arrived in Ostia this morning," Rutilius Rufus said. "Three days ago he was in Massilia, and the day before that, he was in Arausio, near which our armies stationed themselves. I call upon Marcus Aurelius Cotta to speak, and give the House notice that this meeting is being transcribed verbatim for the records." Of course Cotta had bathed and changed, but there could be no mistaking the grey tinge of fatigue in his normally highly colored face, and every line of his body as he got to his feet indicated the immensity of that fatigue. "On the day before the Nones of October, Conscript Fathers, a battle was fought at Arausio," said Cotta, not needing to project his voice, for the House was utterly still. "The Germans annihilated us. Eighty thousand of our soldiers are dead." No one exclaimed, no one murmured, no one moved; the House sat in a silence as profound as that inside the Sibyl's cave at Cumae. "When I say eighty thousand soldiers, I mean just that. The noncombatant dead number some twenty-four thousand more. And the cavalry dead are separate again." His voice expressionlessly level, Cotta went on to tell the senators exactly what had happened from the time he and his five companions arrived at Arausio the fruitless dickering with Caepio; the atmosphere of confusion and unrest Caepio's flouting of orders created within Mallius Maximus's chain of command, some of whom sided with Caepio, like Caepio's son; the stranding of the consular Aurelius and the cavalry too far away to act as part of a military machine. "Five thousand troopers, all their noncombatants, and every single animal in Aurelius's camp perished. The legate Marcus Aurelius Scaurus was taken prisoner by the Germans and used as a deliberate example. They burned him alive, Conscript Fathers. He died, I was told by a witness, with extreme courage and bravery." There were ashen faces among the senators now, for most had sons or brothers or nephews or cousins in one or the other of the armies; men wept silently, heads muffled in their togas, or sat forward, faces hidden in their hands. Scaurus Princeps Senatus alone remained erect, two fierce spots of color in his cheeks, mouth a hard line. "All of you here today must take a part of the blame," said Cotta. "Your delegation did not contain one consular, and I a mere ex-praetor! was the only curule magistrate among the six. With the result that Quintus Servilius Caepio refused to speak with us as his equals in birth or seniority. Or even experience. Instead, he took our insignificance, our lack of clout, as a message from the Senate that it was behind him in his stand against Gnaeus Mallius Maximus. And he was right to do so, Conscript Fathers! If you had seriously intended to see that Quintus Servilius obeyed the law by subordinating himself to the consul of the year, you would have stuffed your delegation with consulars! But you did not. You deliberately sent five pedarii and one ex-praetor to deal with one of the House's most obdurately elitist, most senior members!'' Not a head came up; more and more were now shrouded in folds of toga. But Scaurus Princeps Senatus continued to sit bolt upright, his blazing eyes never leaving Cotta's face. "The rift between Quintus Servilius Caepio and Gnaeus Mallius Maximus prevented the amalgamation of their forces. Instead of a tightly bound single army comprising no less than seventeen legions and over five thousand horse, Rome fielded two armies twenty miles apart, with the smaller one closer to the German advance, and the body of cavalry separate again. Quintus Servilius Caepio personally told me that he would not share his triumph with Gnaeus Mallius Maximus, and so had deliberately put his army too far north of Gnaeus Mallius's to allow it any participation in his battle." Cotta drew in a rasping breath which sounded so loud in the silence that Rutilius Rufus jumped. Scaurus did not. Beside Scaurus, Metellus Numidicus poked his head slowly out of his toga, straightened to reveal a stony face. "Even leaving aside the disastrous rift between them, the truth is, Conscript Fathers, that neither Quintus Servilius nor Gnaeus Mallius had sufficient military talent to win against the Germans! However, of the two commanders, it is Quintus Servilius who must take the brunt of the blame. For not only was he as poor a general as Gnaeus Mallius, but he flouted the law as well. He put himself above the law, he deemed the law a device for lesser mortals than himself! A true Roman, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus" this was said directly to the Leader of the House, who didn't move "holds the law paramount, knowing that under the law there is no true social distinction, only a system of checks and balances we have deliberately designed to ensure that no man can consider himself above his peers. Quintus Servilius Caepio behaved like the First Man in Rome. But under the law, there cannot be a First Man in Rome! So I say to you that Quintus Servilius broke the law, where Gnaeus Mallius was simply an inadequate general." The stillness and the silence continued; Cotta sighed. "Arausio is a worse disaster than Cannae, my fellow senators. The flower of our men is perished. I know, for I was there. Perhaps thirteen thousand soldiers survived, and they the greenest troops of all fled without any order to retreat, leaving their arms and armor behind on the field, and swimming the Rhodanus to safety. They are still wandering unmustered to the west of the river somewhere, and, from some reports I have had, are so frightened of the Germans that they intend to go to earth rather than run the risk of being collected and put back into a Roman army. When he tried to stop this rout, the tribune Sextus Julius Caesar was cut down by his own soldiers. I am pleased to say he lives, for I found him on the field myself, left for dead by the Germans. I and my companions twenty-nine, all told were the only people available to succor the wounded, and for nearly three days no others came to help. Though the vast majority of those left lying on the field were dead, there can be no doubt that some died who might not have died were there people on hand to give them aid after the battle." In spite of iron control, Metellus Numidicus moved, his hand going out in dreadful query. Cotta caught the gesture, and looked at Gaius Marius's enemy, who was his own friend; for Cotta had no love to lay on Gaius Marius's altar. "Your son, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus, survived unharmed, but not as a coward. He rescued the consul Gnaeus Mallius and some of his personal staff. However, both the sons of Gnaeus Mallius were killed. Of the twenty-four elected tribunes of the soldiers, only three survived Marcus Livius Drusus, Sextus Julius Caesar, and Quintus Servilius Caepio Junior. Marcus Livius and Sextus Julius were severely wounded. Quintus Servilius Junior who commanded the greenest legion of troops, closest to the river survived unharmed by swimming to safety, in what circumstances of personal integrity I do not know." Cotta paused to clear his throat, wondering if the vast relief in Metellus Numidicus's eyes was mostly for the simple survival of his son, or for the news that his son had been no coward. "But these casualty figures pale when compared to the fact that not one centurion of any experience in either army is now alive. Rome is officerless, Conscript Fathers! And the great army of Gaul-across-the-Alps no longer exists." He waited for a moment, then added, "It never did exist, thanks to Quintus Servilius Caepio." Outside the great bronze doors of the Curia Hostilia the news was being disseminated by those close enough to hear to those too far-away to hear, an ever-widening audience that was still gathering, now spreading up the Argiletum and the Clivus Argentarius, and across the lower Forum Romanum behind the well of the Comitia. The crowds were immense. But they were quiet crowds. The only sounds were the sounds of tears. Rome had lost the crucial battle. And Italy was open to the Germans. Before Cotta could sit down, Scaurus spoke. "And where are the Germans now, Marcus Aurelius? How much farther south of Arausio were they when you left to bring us the news? And how much farther south might they be now, this very moment?" he asked. "I honestly do not know, Princeps Senatus. For when the battle was over and it only took about an hour the Germans turned back into the north, apparently to fetch their wagons and women and children, left just to the north of the cavalry camp. But when I departed, they had not come back. And I interviewed a German man whom Marcus Aurelius Scaurus had employed as one of his interpreters when the German chiefs came to parley. This man was captured, recognized as a German, and so was not harmed. According to him, the Germans quarreled, and have for the moment, anyway split up into three separate groups. It seems none of the three groups is confident enough to press on alone south into our territory. So they are going to Spain by various routes through Long-haired Gaul. But the quarrel was induced by Roman wine taken as part of the spoils. How long the rift will persist, no one can predict. Nor can I be sure that the man I interviewed was telling all the truth. Or even part of the truth, for that matter. He says he escaped and came back because he doesn't want to live as a German anymore. But it may be that he was sent back by the Germans to lull our fears and make us even easier prey. All I can tell you for certain is that when I left, there was no sign of a southward German movement," said Cotta, and sat down. Rutilius Rufus rose to his feet. "This is not the occasion for a debate, Conscript Fathers. Nor is it an occasion for recriminations, yet more quarrels. Today is an occasion for action." "Hear, hear!" said a voice from the back. "Tomorrow is the Ides of October," Rutilius Rufus went on. "That means the campaign season is just about over. But we have very little time left to us if we are to prevent the Germans invading Italy anytime they feel like doing so. I have formulated a plan of action which I intend to present to you now, but first I am going to give you a solemn warning. At the slightest sign of argument, dissension, or any other conceivable polarization of this House, I will take my plan to the People and have it approved in the Plebeian Assembly. Thereby depriving you, Conscript Fathers, of your prerogative to take the lead in all matters pertaining to the defense of Rome. The conduct of Quintus Servilius Caepio points up the greatest weakness of our senatorial order namely, its unwillingness to admit that Chance and Fortune and Luck occasionally combine to throw up men from the lower ranks with far greater abilities than all of us who regard ourselves as entitled by birth and tradition to govern the People of Rome and command Rome's armies." He had turned his person and pitched his voice toward the open doors, and the great high sound of it floated out into the air above the Comitia. "We are going to need every able-bodied man in all of Italy, so much is sure. From the Head Count clear through the orders and classes to the Senate, every able-bodied man! I therefore require a decree from you directing the Plebs to enact a law immediately forbidding any man between the ages of seventeen and thirty-five any man, be he Roman or Latin or Italian to leave the shores of Italy, or cross the Arnus or the Rubico into Italian Gaul. By tomorrow I want couriers riding at the gallop to every port in our peninsula with orders that no ship or boat is to accept an able-bodied free man as crew or passenger. The penalty will be death, both for the man trying to avoid military service and the man accepting him." No one in the House said a word not Scaurus Princeps Senatus, not Metellus Numidicus, not Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus, not Ahenobarbus Senior, not Catulus Caesar, not Scipio Nasica. Good, thought Rutilius Rufus. They'll not oppose that law, anyway. "All available personnel will be set to recruiting soldiers of any class from Head Count to Senate. And that means, Conscript Fathers, that those among you aged thirty-five or younger will automatically be inducted into the legions, no matter how many campaigns you have served in previously. We will get soldiers if we enforce this law rigorously. However, I very much fear we won't get enough. Quintus Servilius cleaned out the last pockets of those throughout Italy owning property, and Gnaeus Mallius took almost seventy thousand men of the Head Count, either as soldiers or as noncombatants. "So we must look to what other armies we have available. In Macedonia: two legions only, both of auxiliaries, which cannot possibly be spared duty there. In Spain: two legions in the further province, and one in the nearer province two of these legions are Roman, one auxiliary and not only will they have to stay in Spain, but they must be heavily reinforced, for the Germans say they intend to invade Spain." He paused. And Scaurus Princeps Senatus came to life at last. "Get on with it, Publius Rutilius!" he said testily. "Get to Africa and Gaius Marius!" Rutilius Rufus blinked, feigning surprise. "Why, thank you, Princeps Senatus, thank you! If you hadn't mentioned it, I might have forgotten! Oh, truly are you called the watchdog of the Senate! What would we do without you?" "Spare me the sarcasm, Publius Rutilius!" Scaurus snarled. "Just get on with it!" "Certainly! There are three aspects of Africa which I think must be mentioned. The first is a war successfully concluded an enemy completely rolled up, an enemy king and his family at this very moment waiting for retribution right here in Rome, as houseguests of our noble Quintus Caecilius Metellus Piggle-wiggle oooops, I do beg your pardon, Quintus Caecilius! Numidicus, I mean! well, here in Rome, certainly. “The second aspect,'' he went on, "is an army six legions strong composed of the Head Count, admittedly! but superbly well trained, and valiant, and brilliantly officered from the most junior centurion and cadet-tribune clear through to its legates. With it is a cavalry force two thousand strong, of equally experienced and valorous men." Rutilius Rufus stopped, rocked on his heels, grinned all around him wolfishly. "The third aspect, Conscript Fathers, is a man. One single man. I refer of course to the proconsul Gaius Marius, commander-in-chief of the African army, and sole engineer of a victory so complete it ranks with the victories of Scipio Aemilianus. Numidia will not rise again. The threat in Africa to Rome's citizens, property, province, and grain supply is now nonexistent. In fact, Gaius Marius is bequeathing us an Africa so subjugated and pacified that it is not even necessary to put a garrison legion there." He left the dais on which stood the curule chairs, stepped down onto the black-and-white flagging of the ancient floor, and walked toward the doors, standing so that the main volume of his voice went outside into the Forum. "Rome's need for a general is even greater than her need for soldiers or centurions. As Gaius Marius once said in this very House, thousands upon thousands of Rome's soldiers have perished in the few years since the death of Gaius Gracchus due solely to the incompetence of the men who led them and their centurions! And at the time Gaius Marius spoke, Italy was still the richer by a hundred thousand men than Italy is right at this moment. But how many soldiers, centurions, and noncombatants has Gaius Marius himself lost? Why, Conscript Fathers, virtually none! Three years ago he took six legions with him to Africa, and he still has those legions alive and well. Six veteran legions, six legions with centurions'." He paused, then roared at the top of his voice, "Gaius Marius is the answer to Rome's need for an army and a competent general!" His small spare figure showed briefly against the press of listeners outside on the porch when he turned to walk back up the length of the House to his dais. There he stopped. "You have heard Marcus Aurelius Cotta say that there has been a quarrel among the Germans, and that at the moment they seem to have abandoned their intention of migrating through our province of Gaul-across-the-Alps. But we cannot possibly let ourselves relax because of this report. We must be skeptical of it, not emboldened by it to indulge in further stupidity. However, one fact seems fairly sure. That we do have the coming winter to prepare. And the first phase of preparation must be to appoint Gaius Marius proconsul in Gaul, with an imperium that cannot be rescinded until the Germans are beaten." There was a general murmur, a harbinger of coming protest. Then came the voice of Metellus Numidicus. "Give Gaius Marius the governorship of Gaul-across-the-Alps with a proconsular imperium for anything up to year*?" he asked incredulously. "Over my dead body!" Rutilius Rufus stamped his foot, shook his fist. "Oh, ye gods, there you go!" he cried. "Quintus Caecilius, Quintus Caecilius, do you not yet understand the magnitude of our plight? We need a general of Gaius Marius's caliber!" "We need his troops," said Scaurus Princeps Senatus loudly. "We do not need Gaius Marius! There are others here as good." "Meaning your friend Quintus Caecilius Piggle-wiggle, Marcus Aemilius?" Rutilius Rufus blew a rude noise. "Rubbish! For two years Quintus Caecilius fiddled about in Africa I know, because I was there! I worked with Quintus Caecilius, and Piggle-wiggle is an apt name for that gentleman, because he's as turgidly calculating as any woman's piggle-wiggle! I have also worked with Gaius Marius. And perhaps it is not too much to hope that some of the members of this House remember about me that I am no mean Military Man myself! I should have been given the command in Gaul-across-the-Alps, not Gnaeus Maximus! But that is past, and 1 do not have the time to waste in recriminations. "I say to you now, Conscript Fathers, that Rome's plight is too huge and urgent to pander to a few individuals at the top of our noble tree! I say to you now, Conscript Fathers all you who sit on the middle tiers of both sides of the House, and all you who sit on the back tiers of both sides of this House! that there is only one man with the ability to lead us out of our peril! And that one man is Gaius Marius! What matter, that he isn't in the studbook? What matter, that he isn't a Roman of Rome? Quintus Servilius Caepio is a Roman of Rome, and look where he's put us! Do you know where he's put us? Right in the middle of the shit!" Rutilius Rufus was roaring, angry and afraid, sure now that they wouldn't see the reason of his proposal. "Honorable members of this House Good Men all fellow senators! I beseech you to put aside your prejudices just this once! We must give Gaius Marius proconsular power in Gaul-across-the-Alps for however long it is going to take to shove the Germans back to Germania!" And this last passionate plea worked. He had them. Scaurus knew it; Metellus Numidicus knew it. The praetor Manius Aquillius rose to his feet; a man noble enough, but coming from a family whose history was checkered with more deeds of cupidity than deeds of glory; his father it was who, in the wars after King Attalus of Pergamum willed his kingdom to Rome, had sold the whole land of Phrygia to the fifth King Mithridates of Pontus for a huge sum of gold, and thereby let the inscrutable Orient into western Asia Minor. "Publius Rutilius, I wish to speak," he said. "Speak, then," said Rutilius Rufus, and sat down, spent. "I wish to speak!" said Scaurus Princeps Senatus angrily. "After Manius Aquillius," said Rutilius Rufus sweetly. '' Publius Rutilius, Marcus Aemilius, Conscript Fathers,'' Aquillius began correctly, "I agree with the consul that there is only one man with the genius to extricate us from our plight, and I agree that man is Gaius Marius. But the answer our esteemed consul has proposed is not the right one. We cannot handicap Gaius Marius with a proconsular imperium limited to Gaul-across-the-Alps. First of all, what happens if the war moves out of Gaul-across-the-Alps? What if its theater shifts to Italian Gaul, or Spain, or even to Italy itself? Why, the command will automatically shift to the appropriate governor, or to the consul of the year! Gaius Marius has many enemies in this House. And I for one am not sure that those enemies will hold Rome dearer than their grudges. The refusal of Quintus Servilius Caepio to collaborate with Gnaeus Mallius Maximus is a perfect example of what happens when a member of the old nobility holds his dignitas more important than Rome's dignitas." "You are mistaken, Manius Aquillius," Scaurus interjected. "Quintus Servilius held his dignitas identical to Rome's!" "I thank you for the correction, Princeps Senatus," said Aquillius smoothly, and with a little bow no one could honestly call ironic. "You are absolutely correct to correct me. The dignitas of Rome and that of Quintus Servilius Caepio are identical! But why do you hold the dignitas of Gaius Marius as so inferior to Quintus Servilius Caepio's? Surely Gaius Marius's personal share is quite as high, if not higher, even if his ancestors owned not a scrap! Gaius Marius's personal career has been illustrious! And does any member of this House seriously believe that Gaius Marius thinks of Arpinum first, Rome second? Does any member of this House seriously believe Gaius Marius thinks of Arpinum in any other way than that it is a part of Rome? All of us have ancestors who were once New Men! Even Aeneas who came to Latium from far-off Ilium, after all! was a New Man! Gaius Marius has been praetor and consul. He has therefore ennobled himself, and his descendants to the very end of time will be noble." Aquillius's eyes roved across the white-clad ranks. "I see several Conscript Fathers here today who bear the name of Porcius Cato. Now their grandfather was a New Man. But do we today think of these Porcii Catones as anything save pillars of this House, noble descendants of a man who in his own day had much the same effect on men with the name of Cornelius Scipio as Gaius Marius has today on men with the name of Caecilius Metellus?" He shrugged, got down from the dais, and emulated Rutilius Rufus by striding down the floor of the House to a position near the open doors. "It is Gaius Marius and no other who must retain supreme command against the Germans. No matter where the theater of war might be! Therefore it is not enough to invest Gaius Marius with a proconsular imperium limited to Gaul-across-the-Alps." He turned to face the House, and thundered his words. "As is evident, Gaius Marius is not here to give his personal opinion, and time is galloping away as fast as a bolting horse. Gaius Marius must be consul. That is the only way we can give him the power he is going to need. He must be put up as a candidate for the coming consular elections a candidate in absentia!" The House was growling, murmuring, but Manius Aquillius carried on, and carried their attention. "Can anyone here deny that the men of the Centuries are the finest flower of the People? So I say to you, let the men of the Centuries decide! By either electing Gaius Marius consul in absentia, or not electing him! For this decision of the supreme command is too big for this House to make. And it is also too big for the Assembly of the Plebs or even of the Whole People to make. I say to you, Conscript Fathers, that the decision of the supreme command against the Germans must be handed to that section of the Roman People who matter the most the men of the First and the Second Classes of citizens, voting in their centuries in their own Assembly, the Comitia Centuriata!" Oh, here is Ulysses! thought Rutilius Rufus. I would never have thought of this! Nor do I approve. But he's got the Scaurus faction by the balls just the same. No, it would never have worked to take the vexed question of Gaius Marius's imperium to the People in their tribes, have the whole thing conducted by the tribunes of the plebs in an atmosphere of shouting, yelling, even rioting crowds! To men like Scaurus, the Plebeian Assembly is an excuse for the rabble to run Rome. But the men of the First and Second Classes? Oh, they're a very different breed of Roman! Clever, clever Manius Aquillius! First you do something unheard of, by proposing that a man be elected consul when he isn't even here to stand for office, and then you let the Scaurus faction know that you are willing to have the whole question decided by Rome's finest! If Rome's finest don't want Gaius Marius, then all they have to do is organize the First and Second Classes of the Centuries to vote for two other men. If they do want Gaius Marius, then all they have to do is vote for him and one other man. And I'd be willing to bet that the Third Class doesn't even get a chance to vote! Exclusivity is satisfied. The real legal quibble is the in absentia proviso. Manius Aquillius will have to go to the Plebeian Assembly for that, though, because the Senate won't give it to him. Look at the tribunes of the plebs wriggling with glee on their bench! There won't be a veto among them they'll take the in absentia dispensation to the Plebs, and the Plebs, dazzled by the vision of ten tribunes of the plebs in accord, will pass a special law enabling Gaius Marius to be elected consul in absentia. Of course Scaurus and Metellus Numidicus and the others will argue the binding power of the lex Villia annalis, which says that no man can stand a second time for the consulship until ten years have elapsed. And Scaurus and Metellus Numidicus and the others will lose. This Manius Aquillius needs watching, thought Rutilius Rufus, turning in his chair to watch. Amazing! he thought. They can sit there for years as demure and tractable as a new little Vestal Virgin, and then all of a sudden the opportunity presents itself, and off comes the sheep's disguise, forth stands the wolf. You, Manius Aquillius, are a wolf.
5
Tidying up Africa was a pleasure, not only for Gaius Marius, but for Lucius Cornelius Sulla too. Military duties were exchanged for administrative, admittedly, yet neither man disliked the challenge of organizing a brand-new Africa Province, and two kingdoms around it. Gauda was now King of Numidia; not much of a man himself, he had a good son in Prince Hiempsal who would be king, Marius thought, fairly quickly. Reinstated as an official Friend and Ally of the Roman People, Bocchus of Mauretania found his realm enormously enlarged by the gift of most of western Numidia; where once the river Muluchath had been his eastern boundary, this now lay only fifty miles to the west of Cirta and Rusicade. Most of eastern Numidia went into a much bigger Africa Province to be governed by Rome, so that Marius could dower all the knights and landowners in his clientele with the rich coastal lands of the Lesser Syrtis, including the old and still powerful Punic town of Leptis Magna, as well as Lake Tritonis and the port of Tacape. For his own uses, Marius kept the big, fertile islands of the Lesser Syrtis; he had plans for them, particularly for Meninx and Cercina. "When we get round to discharging the army," Marius said to Sulla, "there comes the problem of what to do with them. They're all Head Count, which means they have no farms or businesses to go back to. They'll be able to enlist in other armies, and I suspect a lot of them will want to do that, but some won't. However, the State owns their equipment, which means they won't be allowed to keep it, and that means the only armies they'll be able to enlist in will be Head Count armies. With Scaurus and Piggle-wiggle opposing financing of Head Count armies in the House, there's a distinct possibility Head Count armies of the future will be rare birds, at least after the Germans are dealt with oh, Lucius Cornelius, wouldn't it be grand to be in that campaign? But they'll never agree to it, alas." "I'd give my eyeteeth," said Sulla. "You could spare them," said Marius. "Go on with what you were saying about the men who will want their discharges," Sulla prompted. "I think the State owes Head Count soldiers a little more than their share of the booty at the end of a campaign. I think the State should gift each man with a plot of land to settle on when he elects to retire. Make decent, modestly affluent citizens of them, in other words." "A military version of the land settlements the Brothers Gracchi tried to introduce?" asked Sulla, frowning slightly. "Precisely. You don't approve?" "I was thinking of the opposition in the House." "Well, I've been thinking that the opposition would be much less if the land involved wasn't ager publicus in Rome's public domain. Start even talking about giving away the ager publicus, and you're asking for trouble. Too many powerful men are leasing it. No, what I plan to do is secure permission from the House or the People, if the House won't do it hopefully, it won't come to that to settle Head Count soldiers on nice big plots of land on Cercina and Meninx, right here in the African Lesser Syrtis. Give each man, say, a hundred iugera, and he will do two things for Rome. First of all, he and his companions will form the nucleus of a trained body of men who can be called up for duty in the event of any future war in Africa. And secondly, he and his companions will bring Rome to the provinces Rome's thoughts, customs, language, way of life." But Sulla frowned. "I don't know, Gaius Marius it seems wrong to me to want to do the second thing. Rome's thoughts, customs, language, way of life those things belong to Rome. To graft them onto Punic Africa, with its Berbers and Moors beneath that again well, to me it seems a betrayal of Rome." Marius rolled his eyes toward the roof. "There is no doubt, Lucius Cornelius, that you are an aristocrat! Live a low life you might have done, but think low you don't." He reverted to the task at hand. "Have you got those lists of all the odds and ends of booty? The gods help us if we forget to itemize the last gold-headed nail and in quintuplicate!" "Treasury clerks, Gaius Marius, are the dregs of the Roman wine flagon," said Sulla, hunting through papers. "Of anybody's wine flagon, Lucius Cornelius."
On the Ides of November a letter came to Utica from the consul Publius Rutilius Rufus. Marius had got into the habit of sharing these letters with Sulla, who enjoyed Rutilius Rufus's racy style even more than Marius did, being better with words than Marius was. However, Marius was alone when the letter was brought to his office, which fact pleased him; for he liked the opportunity to go through it first to familiarize himself with the text, and when Sulla sat listening to him mutter his way across the endless squiggles trying to divide them up into separate words, it tended to put him off. But he had hardly begun to read it aloud to himself when he jumped, shivered, leaped to his feet. “Jupiter!'' he cried, and ran for Sulla's office. He burst in, white-faced, brandishing the scroll. "Lucius Cornelius! A letter from Publius Rutilius!" "What? What is it?" "A hundred thousand Roman dead," Marius began, reading out important snatches of what he had already read himself. "Eighty thousand of the dead are soldiers... The Germans annihilated us.... That fool Caepio refused to join camps with Mallius Maximus ... insisted on staying twenty miles to the north ... Young Sextus Caesar was badly wounded, so was young Sertorius ... Only three of the twenty-four tribunes of the soldiers survived ... No centurions left ... The soldiers who did survive were the greenest, and have deserted ... A whole legion of propertied Marsi dead, and the nation of the Marsi has already lodged a protest with the Senate ... claiming huge damages, in court if necessary ... The Samnites are furious too ..." "Jupiter!" breathed Sulla, flopping back into his chair. Marius read on to himself for a moment, murmuring a little too softly for Sulla to hear; then he made a most peculiar noise. Thinking Marius was about to have some sort of seizure, Sulla got quickly to his feet, but didn't have time to get around his desk before the reason came out. "I am consul!" gasped Gaius Marius. Sulla stopped in his tracks, face slack. "Jupiter!" he said again, could think of nothing else to say. Marius began to read Rutilius Rufus's letter out loud to Sulla, for once beyond caring how much he stumbled as he sorted the squiggles into words.
"The day wasn't over before the People got the bit between their teeth. Manius Aquillius didn't even have time to resume his seat before all ten tribunes of the plebs were off their bench and streaming out the door toward the rostra, with what looked like half of Rome jammed into the Comitia well, and the other half filling the whole of the lower Forum. Of course the whole House followed the tribunes of the plebs, leaving Scaurus and our dear friend Piggle-wiggle shouting to nothing more than a couple of hundred capsized stools. "The tribunes of the plebs convened the Plebeian Assembly, and within no time flat, two plebiscites were tabled. It always amazes me that we can manage to trot out something better phrased and drafted in the twinkling of an eye than we can after several months of everyone and his uncle having a go at it. Just goes to show that everyone and his uncle do little else than fragment good laws into bad. "Cotta had told me that Caepio was on his way to Rome as fast as he could to get his version in first, but intended to keep his imperium by staying beyond the pomerium and having his son and his agents go to work on his behalf inside the city. That way, he thought he would be safe and snug with his imperium wrapped protectively around him until his version of events became the official version. I imagine he thought and no doubt correctly that he'd manage to have his governorship prorogued, and so retain his imperium and his tenure of Gaul-across-the-Alps for long enough to let the stench dissipate. "But they got him, did the Plebs! They voted overwhelmingly to strip Caepio of his imperium at once. So when he does reach the outskirts of Rome, he's going to find himself as naked as Ulysses on the beach at Scheria. The second plebiscite, Gaius Marius, directed the electoral officer me to enter your name as a candidate for the consulship, despite your inability to be present in Rome for the elections."
"This is the work of Mars and Bellona, Gaius Marius!" said Sulla. "A gift from the gods of war." "Mars? Bellona? No! This is the work of Fortune, Lucius Cornelius. Your friend and mine, Lucius Cornelius. Fortune!' ' He read on.
"The People having ordered me to get on with the elections, I had little choice but to do so. "Incidentally, after the plebiscites were tabled, none other than Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus feeling a proprietary interest because he regards himself as the founder of our province of Gaul-across-the-Alps, I imagine tried to speak from the rostra against the plebiscite allowing you to stand for consul in absentia. Well, you know how choleric that family are arrogant lot of bad-tempered so-and-sos, all of them! and Gnaeus Domitius was literally spitting with rage. When the crowd got fed up with him and shouted him down, he tried to shout the crowd down! I think being Gnaeus Domitius he had a fair chance of succeeding too. But something gave way inside his head or his heart, for he keeled over right there on the rostra as dead as last week's roast duck. It rather put a damper on things, so the meeting broke up and the crowd went home. The important work was done, anyway. "The plebiscites were passed the next morning, without one dissenting tribe. Leaving me to get the elections under way. I let no grass grow beneath my feet, I can tell you. A polite request to the College of Tribunes of the Plebs got everything going. They polled the new college within days. A very likely-looking and superior lot stood too, I imagine because of matters like warring generals. We have the late lamented Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus's elder son, and the late lamented Lucius Cassius Longinus's elder son. I gather Cassius is out to prove that not every member of his family is an irresponsible killer of Roman soldiers, so he ought to be good value as far as you're concerned, Gaius Marius. And Lucius Marcius Philippus got in, and ho-hum! a Clodius of the Very Many Claudius-Clodius brigade. Ye gods, how they do breed! "The Centuriate Assembly polled yesterday, with the result that as I said a few columns back Gaius Marius was returned as senior consul by every single century in the First Class, plus all of the Second Class required to make up the numbers. Certain senior senators would have loved to destroy your chances, but you are far too well known as a patron of honor and sincere supporter of big business (especially after your scrupulous honoring of all your promises in Africa). The voting knights had no qualms of conscience about details such as running for consul a second time within three years, or standing for consul in absentia."