"So when I see you, Gaius Marius, it will be to hand over the trappings of my office to you. I wish I could say I was glad with every tiniest part of me. For Rome's sake, it was vital that you be given the German command, but oh, I wish it could have been done in a more orthodox way! I think of the enemies you will add to those you have already made, and my whole body quails. You have caused too many changes in the way our lawmaking machinery functions. Yes, I know every single one was necessary if you were to survive. But, as it was said by the Greeks about their Odysseus, the strand of his life was so strong it rubbed all the life-strands it crossed until they snapped. I think Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus has some right on his side in this present situation, for I acquit him of the narrow-minded bigotry of men like Numidicus Piggle-wiggle. Scaurus sees the passing of the old way Rome operated, as indeed do I. And yes, I understand Rome is busy building its own funeral pyre, that if the Senate could be trusted to leave you alone to deal with the Germans in your own way and your own time, none of these startling, extraordinary, unorthodox, and novel measures would be necessary. But I grieve nonetheless."
Marius's voice hadn't wavered, nor his decision to read it all out to Sulla, even though the conclusion was less satisfying, and took the keenest edge off his pleasure. "There's a little more," he said. "I'll read it."
"Your candidacy, I must add in closing, frightened all of honor and repute away. Some decent fellows had got as far as putting their names up for consul, but they all withdrew. As did Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar, declaring he wouldn't work with you as his colleague any more than he would with his lapdog had it been elected. Consequently your colleague in the consulship is a man of straw. Which may not dismay you unduly, for he certainly won't give you any battles. I know you're dying to hear who he is, but grant me my little tittle! I would only say of him, he's venal, though I think you already know that about him. His name? Gaius Flavius Fimbria."
Sulla snorted. "Oh, I know him," he said. "A visiting thrill seeker in the stews of a Rome that was mine, not his. And as crooked as a dog's hind leg." The white teeth showed, not the striking sight they would have been in a face even a little darker. "Which means, Gaius Marius, don't let him cock that leg and piss on you." "I shall leap very fast and well to the side," said Marius gravely. He stretched out his hand to Sulla, who took it at once. "A pledge, Lucius Cornelius. That we will beat the Germans, you and I."
The army of Africa and its commander sailed from Utica to Puteoli toward the end of November, in high fettle. The sea was calm for the time of year, and neither the North Wind, Septentrio, nor the Northwest Wind, Corus, disturbed their passage. Which was exactly what Marius expected; his career was in its ascendancy, Fortune was his to command as surely as his soldiers were. Besides, Martha the Syrian prophetess had predicted a quick smooth voyage. She was with Marius in his flagship, replete with honor and gummy cackles, an ancient bag of bones the sailors a superstitious lot, always eyed askance and avoided fearfully. King Gauda had not been keen to part with her; then she spat upon the marble floor in front of his throne and threatened to put the Evil Eye upon him and all his house. After that, he couldn't get rid of her fast enough. In Puteoli, Marius and Sulla were met by one of the brand-new Treasury quaestors, very brisk and anxious to have the tally of booty, but very deferential too. It pleased Marius and Sulla to be graciously helpful, and as they were possessed of admirable account books, everyone was pleased. The army went into camp outside Capua, surrounded by new recruits being drilled by Rutilius Rufus's gladiatorial conscripts. Now Marius's skilled centurions were put to helping. The saddest part, however, was the scarcity of these new recruits. Italy was a dry well, and would be until the younger generation turned seventeen in sufficient numbers to swell the ranks once more. Even the Head Count was exhausted, at least among the Roman citizens. "And I very much doubt if the Senate will condone my recruiting among the Italian Head Count," said Marius. "They haven't much choice," said Sulla. "True. If I push them. But right at the moment it's not in my interests or Rome's interests to push them." Marius and Sulla were splitting up until New Year's Day. Sulla of course was free to enter the city, but Marius, still endowed with his proconsular imperium, could not cross the sacred boundary of the city without losing it. So Sulla was going to Rome, whereas Marius was going to his villa at Cumae.
Cape Misenum formed the formidable north headland of what was called Crater Bay, a huge and very safe anchorage dotted with seaports Puteoli, Neapolis, Herculaneum, Stabiae, and Surrentum. A tradition so old it went back far before lore or memory held that once Crater Bay had been a gigantic volcano, which exploded and let the sea in. There was evidence of that volcanic activity, of course. The Fields of Fire lit up the night skies behind Puteoli sullenly as flames belched out of cracks in the ground, and mud pools boiled with sluggish plops, and vivid yellow encrustations of sulphur lay everywhere; vents roaring columns of steam popped up anywhere, and either closed up again or got bigger; and then there was Vesuvius a rugged, almost sheer pinnacle of rock many thousands of feet high, said once to have been an active volcano though no one knew when that might have been, for Vesuvius had slept peacefully throughout recorded history. Two little towns lay one on either side of the narrow neck of Cape Misenum, along with a series of mysterious lakes. On the seaward side was Cumae, on the Crater Bay side was Baiae, and the lakes were of two kinds one with water so pure and mildly warm it was perfect for growing oysters, one palpably hot and curling wisps of sulphur-tainted steam. Of all the Roman seaside resorts, Cumae was the most expensive, where Baiae was relatively undeveloped. In fact, Baiae seemed to be becoming a commercial fish-farming place, for half a dozen enthusiastic fellows were trying to devise a way to farm oysters, their leader the impoverished patrician aristocrat Lucius Sergius, who hoped to revive his family's fortunes by producing and shipping cultivated oysters to Rome's more affluent Epicureans and gastronomes. Marius's villa stood atop a great sea cliff at Cumae and looked out toward the islands of Aenaria, Pandataria, and Pontia, three peaks with slopes and plains at ever-increasing distance, like mountaintops poking through a sheet of pale-blue mist. And here in Marius's villa, Julia waited for her husband. It was over two and a half years since they had last seen each other; Julia was now almost twenty-four years old, and Marius was fifty-two. That she was desperately anxious to see him he knew, for she had come down from Rome to Cumae at a time of year when the seaside was squally and bitter, and Rome the most comfortable place to be. Custom forbade her traveling anywhere with her husband, especially if he was on any sort of official public business; she could not accompany him to his province, nor even on any of his journeys within Italy unless he formally invited her, and it was considered poor form to issue such invitations. In the summer, when a Roman nobleman's wife went to the seaside, he came down to join her whenever he could, but they made their journeys separately; and if he fancied a few days on the farm or at one of his multiple villas outside Rome, he rarely took his wife with him. Julia wasn't exactly apprehensive; she had written to Marius once a week throughout his time away, and he had written back just as regularly. Neither of them indulged in gossip, so their correspondence tended to be brief and purely filled with family matters, but it was unfailingly affectionate and warm. Of course it was none of her business whether he might have had other women during his time away, and Julia was far too well bred and well trained to contemplate inquiring; nor did she expect him to tell her of his own accord. Such things were a part of the realm of men, and had nothing to do with wives. In that respect, as her mother, Marcia, had been careful to tell her, she was very lucky to be married to a man thirty years older than she was; for his sexual appetites said Marcia would be more continent than those of a younger man, just as his pleasure in seeing his wife again would be greater than that of a younger man. But she had missed him acutely, not merely because she loved him, but also because he pleased her. In fact, she liked him, and that liking made the separations harder to bear, for she missed her friend as much as she missed her husband and lover. When he walked into her sitting room unannounced, she got clumsily to her feet only to find that her knees would not support her, and collapsed back into her chair. How tall he was! How brown and fit and full of life! He didn't look a day older rather, he looked younger than she remembered. There was a wide white smile for her his teeth were as good as ever those fabulously lush eyebrows were glittering with points of light from the dark eyes hidden beneath them, and his big, well-shaped hands were stretched out to her. And she unable to move! What would he think? He thought kindly, it seemed, for he walked across to her chair and drew her gently to her feet, not making any move to embrace her, merely standing looking down at her with that big wide white smile. Then he put his hands up to cup her face between them, and tenderly kissed her eyelids, her cheeks, her lips. Her arms stole round him; she leaned into him and buried her face in his shoulder. "Oh, Gaius Marius, I am so glad to see you!" she said. "No gladder than I to see you, wife." His hands stroked her back, and she could feel them trembling. She lifted her face. "Kiss me, Gaius Marius! Kiss me properly!'' And so their meeting was everything each of them had looked forward to, warm with love, fraught with passion. Not only that; there was the delicious delight of Young Marius, and the private sorrow both parents could now indulge for the death of their second boy. Much to his father's gratified surprise, Young Marius was magnificent tall, sturdy, moderately fair in coloring, and with a pair of large grey eyes which assessed his father fearlessly. Insufficient discipline had been administered, Marius suspected, but all that would change. A father, the scamp would soon discover, was not someone to be dominated and manipulated; a father was someone to reverence and respect, just as he, Gaius Marius, reverenced and respected his own dear father. There were other sorrows than the dead second son; Julia he knew had lost her father, but he now learned through Julia's sensitive telling that his own father was dead. Not before due time, and not until after the elections which had seen his oldest son become consul for the second time in such amazing circumstances. His death had been swift and merciful, a stroke that happened while the old man was busy talking to friends about the welcome Arpinum was going to put on for its most splendid citizen. Marius put his face between Julia's breasts and wept, and was comforted, and afterward was able to see that everything happened at the right moment. For his mother, Fulcinia, had died seven years before, and his father had been lonely; if Fortune had not been kind enough to permit him the sight of his son again, the goddess had at least permitted him to know of his son's extraordinary distinction. "So there's no point in my going to Arpinum," said Marius to Julia later. "We'll stay right here, my love." "Publius Rutilius is coming down soon. After the new tribunes of the plebs settle a bit, he said. I think he fears they may prove a difficult lot some of them are very clever.'' "Then until Publius Rutilius arrives, my dearest, sweetest, most beautiful and darling wife, we won't even think about exasperating things like politics."
Sulla's homecoming was very different. For one thing, he journeyed toward it with none of Marius's simple, unconcealed, eager pleasure. Though why that should be, he didn't want to know, for, like Marius, he had been sexually continent during his two years in the African province admittedly for reasons other than love of his wife, yet continent nevertheless. The brand-new and pristine page with which he had covered up his old life must never be sullied; no graft, no disloyalty to his superior, no intriguing or maneuvering for power, no intimations of fleshly weaknesses, no lessening of his Cornelian honor or dignitas. An actor to the core, he had thrown himself absolutely into the new role his term as Marius's quaestor had given him, lived it inside his mind as well as in all his actions, looks, words. So far it hadn't palled, for it had offered him constant diversion, enormous challenges, and a huge satisfaction. Unable to commission his own imago in wax until he became consul, or sufficiently famous or distinguished in some other way to warrant it, he could still look forward to commissioning Magius of the Velabrum to make a splendid mounting for his war trophies, his Gold Crown and phalerae and torcs, and look forward to being there supervising the installation of this testament to his prowess in the atrium of his house. For the years in Africa had been a vindication; though he would never turn into one of the world's great equestrians, he had turned into one of the world's natural soldiers, and the Magius trophy in his atrium would stand there to tell Rome of this fact. And yet... everything from the old life was there just the same, and he knew it. The yearning to see Metrobius, the love of grotesquery of dwarves and transvestites and raddled old whores and outrageous characters the intractable dislike of women using their powers to dominate him, the capacity to snuff out a life when intolerably threatened, the unwillingness to suffer fools, the gnawing, consuming ambition. . . The actor's African theatrical run was over, but he wasn't looking at a prolonged rest; the future held many parts. And yet... Rome was the stage upon which his old self had postured; Rome spelled anything from ruin to frustration to discovery. So he journeyed toward Rome in wary mood, aware of the profound changes in himself, but also aware that very little had actually changed. The actor between parts, never a truly comfortable creature. And Julilla waited for him very differently than Julia waited for Marius, sure that she loved Sulla far more than Julia loved Marius. To Julilla, any evidence whatsoever of discipline or self-control was proof positive of an inferior brand of love; love of the highest order should overwhelm, invade, shake down the spiritual walls, drive out all vestige of rational thought, roar tempestuously, trample down everything in its path as if some vast elephant. So she waited feverishly, unable to settle to anything other than the wine flask, her costume changed several times a day, her hair now up, now down, now sideways, her servants driven mad. And all this she threw over Sulla like a pall woven from the most clinging and tentacular cobwebs. When he walked into the atrium, she was there running wildly across the room to him, arms outstretched, face transfigured; before he could look at her or collect himself to feel anything, she had glued her mouth to his like a leech on an arm, sucking, devouring, wriggling, wet, all blood and blackness. Her hands were groping after his genitals, she made noises of the most lascivious pleasure, then she actually began to wind her legs about him as he stood in that most unprivate place, watched by the derisive eyes of a dozen slaves, most of whom were total strangers to him. He couldn't help himself; his hands came up and wrenched her arms down, his head went back and ripped her mouth away. "Recollect yourself, madam!" he said. "We are not alone!" She gasped as if he had spat in her face, but it sobered her into conducting herself more sedately; with pitifully casual artlessness she linked her arm through his and walked with him to the peristyle, then down to where her sitting room was, in Nicopolis's old suite of rooms. "Is this private enough?" she asked, a little spitefully. But the mood had been spoiled for him long before this spurt of spite; he didn't want her mouth or her hands probing their way into the most sequestered corners of his being without regard for the sensitivity of the layers they pierced. "Later, later!" he said, moving to a chair. She stood, poor frightened and bewildered Julilla, as if her world had ended. More beautiful than ever, but in a most frail and brittle way, from the sticklike arms poking out of what he recognized at once as draperies in the height of fashion a man with Sulla's background never lost his instinct for line or style to the enormous, slightly mad-looking eyes sunk deep into their orbits amid dense blue-black shadows. "I don't understand!" she cried to him then, not daring to move from where she stood, her gaze drinking him in not avidly anymore, but rather as the mouse drinks in the smile on the face of the cat: are you friend or enemy? "Julilla," he said with what patience he could muster, "I am tired. I haven't had time to regain my land legs. I hardly know any of the faces in this house. And since I'm not in the least drunk, I have all a sober man's inhibitions about the degree of physical license a married couple should allow themselves in public." "But I love you!" she protested. "So I should hope. Just as I love you. Even so, there are boundaries," he said stiffly, wanting everything within his Roman sphere to be exactly right, from wife and domicile to Forum career. When he had thought of Julilla during his two years away, he hadn't honestly remembered what sort of person she was only how she looked, and how frantically, excitingly passionate she was in their bed. In fact, he had thought of her as a man thought of his mistress, not his wife. Now he stared at the young woman who was his wife, and decided she would make a far more satisfactory mistress someone he visited upon his terms, didn't have to share his home with, didn't have to introduce to his friends and associates. I ought never to have married her, he thought. I got carried away by a vision of my future seen through the medium of her eyes for that was all she did, serve as a vessel to pass a vision through on its way from Fortune to Fortune's chosen one. I didn't stop to think that there would be dozens of young noblewomen available to me more suitable than a poor silly creature who tried to starve herself to death for love of me. That in itself is an excess. I don't mind excess but not an excess I'm the object of. Only excess I'm the perpetrator of, thank you! Why have I spent my life tangled up with women who want to suffocate me? Julilla's face altered. Her eyes slid away from the two pale inflexible orbs dwelling upon her in a clinical interest holding nothing of love, or of lust. There! Oh, what would she do without it? Wine, faithful trusty wine... Without stopping to think what he might think, she moved to a side table and poured herself a full goblet of unwatered wine, and downed it in one draft; only then did she remember him, and turn to him with a question in her gaze. "Wine, Sulla?" she asked. He was frowning. "You put that away mighty quick! Do you normally toss your wine back like that?'' "I needed a drink!" she said fretfully. "You're being very cold and depressing." He sighed. "I daresay I am. Never mind, Julilla. I'll improve. Or maybe you should yes, yes, give me the wine!" He almost snatched the goblet she had been extending mutely for some moments and drank from it, but not at a gulp, and by no means the entire contents. "When last I heard from you you're not much of a letter writer, are you?" The tears were pouring down Julilla's face, but she didn't sob; just wept soundlessly. "I hate writing letters!" "That much is plain," he said dryly. "Anyway, what about them?" she asked, pouring herself a second goblet and drinking it down as quickly as her first. “I was going to say, when last I heard from you, I thought we had a couple of children. A girl and a boy, wasn't it? Not that you bothered to tell me of the boy; I had to find that out from your father." "I was ill," she said, still weeping. "Am I not to see my children?" "Oh, down there!" she cried, pointing rather wildly toward the back of the peristyle. He left her mopping at her face with a handkerchief and back at the wine flagon to refill her empty goblet. His first glimpse of them was through the open window of their nursery, and they didn't see him. A woman's murmuring voice was in the background, but she was invisible; all of his sight was filled with the two little people he had generated. A girl yes, she'd be half past two now standing over a boy yes, he'd be half past one! She was enchanting, the most perfect tiny doll he had ever seen head crowned with a mass of red-gold curls, skin of milk and roses, dimples in her plump pink cheeks, and under soft red-gold brows, a pair of the widest blue eyes, happy and smiling and full of love for her little brother. He was even more enchanting, this son Sulla had never seen. Walking that was good not a stitch of clothing on him that was what his sister was on at him about, so he must do it often and talking he was giving his sister back as good as she was giving him, the villain. And he was laughing. He looked like a Caesar the same long attractive face, the same thick gold hair, the same vivid blue eyes as Sulla's dead father-in-law. And the dormant heart of Lucius Cornelius Sulla didn't just awaken with a leisurely stretch and a yawn, it leaped into the world of feeling as Athene must have leaped fully grown and fully armed from the brow of Zeus, clanging and calling a clarion. In the doorway he went down on his knees and held out both arms to them, eyes shimmering. "Tata is here," he said. "Tata has come home." They didn't even hesitate, let alone shrink away, but ran into the circle of his arms and covered his rapt face with kisses.
Publius Rutilius Rufus turned out not to be the first magistrate to visit Marius at Cumae; the returned hero had scarcely settled into a routine when his steward came inquiring if he would see the noble Lucius Marcius Philippus. Curious as to what Philippus wanted for he had never met the man, and knew the family only in the most cursory way Marius bade his man bring the visitor into his study. Philippus didn't prevaricate; he got straight to the reason for his call. A rather soft-looking fellow, thought Marius too much flabby flesh around his waist, too much jowl beneath his chin but with all the arrogance and self-assurance of the Marcius clan, who claimed descent from Ancus Marcius, the fourth King of Rome, and builder of the Wooden Bridge. "You don't know me, Gaius Marius," he said, his dark brown eyes looking directly into Marius's own, "so I thought I would take the earliest opportunity to rectify the omission given that you are next year's senior consul, and that I am a newly elected tribune of the plebs." "How nice of you to want to rectify the omission," said Marius, his smile devoid of any irony. "Yes, I suppose it is," said Philippus blandly. He sat back in his chair and crossed his legs, an affectation Marius had never cared for, deeming it unmasculine. "What may I do for you, Lucius Marcius?" "Actually, quite a lot." Philippus poked his head forward, his face suddenly less soft, distinctly feral. "I find myself in a bit of financial bother, Gaius Marius, and I thought it behooved me to shall we say offer my services to you as a tribune of the plebs. I wondered, for instance, if there was a small trifle of legislation you'd like passed. Or perhaps you would just like to know that you have a loyal adherent among the tribunes of the plebs back in Rome while you're away keeping the German wolf from our door. Silly Germans! They haven't yet realized that Rome is a wolf, have they? But they will, I'm sure. If anyone can teach them the wolfish nature of Rome, you will." The mind of Marius had moved with singular speed during this preamble. He too sat back, but didn't cross his legs. "As a matter of fact, my dear Lucius Marcius, there is a small trifle I'd like passed through the Plebeian Assembly with a minimum of fuss or attention. I would be delighted to assist you to extricate yourself from your financial bother if you can spare me any legislative bother." "The more generous the donation to my cause, Gaius Marius, the less fuss or attention my law will receive," said Philippus with a broad smile. "Splendid! Name your price," said Marius. "Oh, dear! Such bluntness!" "Name your price," Marius repeated. "Half a million," said Philippus. "Sesterces," said Marius. "Denarii," said Philippus. "Oh, I'd want a lot more than just a trifle of legislation for half a million denarii," said Marius. "For half a million denarii, Gaius Marius, you will get a lot more. Not only my services during my tribunate, but thereafter as well. I do pledge it." "Then we have a deal." "How easy!" exclaimed Philippus, relaxing. "Now what is it I can do for you?'' "I need an agrarian law," said Marius. "Not easy!" Philippus sat up straight, looking stunned. "What on this earth do you want a land bill for? I need money, Gaius Marius, but only if I am to live to spend what's left over after I pay my debts! It is no part of my ambitions to be clubbed to death on the Capitol, for I assure you, Gaius Marius, that a Tiberius Gracchus I am not!" "The law is agrarian in nature, yes, but not contentious," said Marius soothingly. "I assure you, Lucius Marcius, that I am not a reformer or a revolutionary, and have other, better uses for the poor of Rome than to gift them with Rome's precious ager publicus! I'll enlist them in the legions and make them work for any land I give them! No man should get anything for nothing, for a man is not a beast." "But what other land is there to give away than the ager publicus? Unless you intend that the State should buy more of it? Or acquire more of it? But that means finding money,'' said Philippus, still very uneasy. "There's no need to be alarmed," said Marius. "The land concerned is already in Rome's possession. While ever I retain my proconsular imperium over Africa, it is in my province to nominate a use for land confiscated from the Enemy. I can lease it to my clients, or auction it to the highest bidder, or give it to some foreign king as a part of his domains. All I have to do is make sure the Senate confirms my dispositions." Marius shifted, leaned forward, and continued. "But I have no intention of baring my arse for the likes of Metellus Numidicus to sink his teeth into, so I intend to go on as I have always gone on in the past strictly according either to law, or general practice and precedent. Therefore on New Year's Day, I intend to yield up my proconsular imperium over Africa without giving Metellus Numidicus so much as a glance at my bare arse. "All the main dispositions of territory I acquired in the name of the Senate and People of Rome have already been given senatorial sanction. But there is one matter I do not intend to broach myself. It is a matter so delicate, in fact, that I intend to accomplish my purpose in two separate stages. One this coming year, one the year after. "Your job, Lucius Marcius, will be to implement the first stage. Briefly, I believe that if Rome is to continue fielding decent armies, then the legions must become an attractive career for a man of the Head Count, not just an alternative he is pushed to by patriotic zeal in emergencies, or boredom at other times. If he is offered the routine inducements a small wage and a small share in whatever booty a campaign produces he may not be attracted. But if he is assured a piece of good land to settle on or sell up when he retires, the inducement to become a soldier is powerful. However, it cannot be land within Italy. Nor do I see why it should be land in Italy." "I think I begin to see what you want, Gaius Marius," Philippus said, chewing at his full lower lip. "Interesting." "I think so. I have reserved the islands in the Lesser Syrtis of Africa as places on which I can settle my Head Count soldiers after their discharge which, thanks to the Germans, is not going to be for some time. This time I shall use to secure the People's approval for allocating land on Meninx and Cercina to my soldiers. But I have many enemies who will try to stop me, if for no other reason than that they've made whole careers out of trying to stop me," said Marius. Philippus nodded his head up and down like a sage. "It is certainly true that you have many enemies, Gaius Marius." Not sure that sarcasm underlay this remark, Marius gave Philippus a withering look, then went on. "Your job, Lucius Marcius, is to table a law in the Plebeian Assembly reserving the islands of the African Lesser Syrtis in the Roman ager publicus without lease or subdivision or sale unless by further plebiscites. You will not mention soldiers, and you will not mention the Head Count. All you have to do is very casually and quietly make sure that these islands are put into a storage cupboard well enough locked to keep greedy hands off them. It is vital that my enemies do not suspect that I am behind your little law." "Oh, I think I can manage," said Philippus more cheerfully. "Good. On the day that the law goes into effect, I will have my bankers deposit half a million denarii in your name in such a way that your change in fortune cannot be traced back to me," said Marius. Philippus rose to his feet. "You have bought yourself a tribune of the plebs, Gaius Marius," he said, and held out a hand. "What is more, I shall continue to be your man throughout my political career." "I'm glad to hear it," said Marius, shaking the hand. But as soon as Philippus had taken his leave, Marius sent for warm water, and washed both his hands.
"Just because I make use of bribery does not mean I have to like the men I bribe," said Gaius Marius to Publius Rutilius Rufus when he arrived in Cumae five days later. Rutilius Rufus pulled a face of resignation. "Well, he was as true as his word," he said. "He authored your modest little agrarian law as if he'd thought of it all by himself, and he made it sound so logical that no one even argued for the sake of argument. Clever fellow, Philippus, in a slimy sort of way. Accorded himself laurels for patriotism by telling the Assembly that he felt some tiny, insignificant part of the great African land distribution ought to be saved 'banked' was the word he used! for the Roman People's future. There were even those among your enemies who thought he was only doing it to irritate you. The law passed without a murmur." "Good!" said Marius, sighing in relief. "For a while I can be sure the islands will be waiting for me, untouched. I need more time to prove the worth of the Head Count legionary before I dare give him a retirement gift of land. Can't you hear it now? The old-style Roman soldier didn't have to be bribed with a present of land, so why should the new-style soldier get preferential treatment?" He shrugged. "Anyway, enough of that. What else has happened?" "I've passed a law enabling the consul to appoint extra tribunes of the soldiers without holding an election whenever a genuine emergency faces the State," said Rutilius. "Always thinking of what tomorrow might bring! And have you picked any tribunes of the soldiers under your law?" "Twenty-one. The same number who died at Arausio." "Including?" "Young Gaius Julius Caesar." "Now that is good news! Relatives mostly aren't. Do you remember Gaius Lusius? Fellow my brother-in-law's sister Gratidia married?" "Vaguely. Numantia?" "That's him. Awful wart! But very rich. Anyway, he and Gratidia produced a son and heir, now aged twenty-five. And they're begging me to take him with me to fight the Germans. Haven't even met the sprog, but had to say yes all the same, otherwise my brother, Marcus, would never have heard the end of it." "Speaking of your vast collection of relatives, you'll be pleased to know young Quintus Sertorius is at home in Nersia with his mother, and will be fit enough to go to Gaul with you." "Good! As well Cotta went to Gaul this year, eh?" Rutilius Rufus blew a rudely expressive noise. "I ask you, Gaius Marius! One ex-praetor and five backbenchers to form a delegation charged with reasoning with the likes of Caepio? But I knew my Cotta, where Scaurus and Dalmaticus and Piggle-wiggle did not. I had no doubt that whatever could be salvaged out of it, Cotta would." "And Caepio, now he's back?" "Oh, his chin's above water, but he's paddling mighty hard to stay afloat, I can tell you. I predict that as time goes on, he'll tire until only his nostrils are showing. There's a huge swell of public feeling running against him, so his friends on the front benches are unable to do nearly as much for him as they'd like." "Good! He ought to be thrown into the Tullianum and left to starve to death," said Marius grimly. "Only after hand-cutting the wood for eighty thousand funeral pyres," said Rutilius Rufus, teeth showing. "What of the Marsi? Quietened down?" "Their damages suit, you mean? The House threw it out of the courts, of course, but didn't make any friends for Rome in so doing. The commander of the Marsic legion name's Quintus Poppaedius Silo came to Rome intending to testify, and I'll bet you can't guess who was prepared to testify for him too," said Rutilius Rufus. Marius grinned. "You're right, I can't. Who?" "None other than my nephew young Marcus Livius Drusus! It seems they met after the battle Drusus's legion was next to Silo's in the line, apparently. But it came as a shock to Caepio when my nephew who happens to be his son-in-law put his name up to testify in a case which has direct bearing on Caepio's own conduct." "He' s a pup with sharp teeth," said Marius, remembering young Drusus in the law court. "He's changed since Arausio," said Rutilius Rufus. "I'd say he's grown up." "Then Rome may have a good man for the future," said Marius. "It seems likely. But I note a marked change in all those who survived Arausio," said Rutilius Rufus sadly. "They've not yet succeeded in mustering all the soldiers who escaped by swimming the Rhodanus, you know. I doubt they ever will." "I'll find them," said Marius grimly. "They're Head Count, which means they're my responsibility." "That's Caepio's tack, of course," said Rutilius Rufus. "He's trying to shift the blame onto Gnaeus Mallius and the Head Count rabble, as he calls that army. The Marsi are not pleased at being labeled Head Count, nor are the Samnites, and my young nephew Marcus Livius has come out in public and sworn on oath that the Head Count had nothing to do with it. He's a good orator, and a better showman." "As Caepio's son-in-law, how can he criticize Caepio?" Marius asked curiously. "I would have thought even those most against Caepio would be horrified at such lack of family loyalty." "He's not criticizing Caepio at least not directly. It's very neat, really. He says nothing about Caepio at all! He just refutes Caepio's charge that the defeat was due to Gnaeus Mallius's Head Count army. But I notice that young Marcus Livius and young Caepio Junior aren't quite as thick as they used to be, and that's rather difficult, since Caepio Junior is married to my niece, Drusus's sister," said Rutilius Rufus. “Well, what can you expect when all you wretched nobles insist upon marrying each other's cousins rather than letting some new blood in?" Marius demanded, and shrugged. "But enough of that! Any more news?" "Only about the Marsi, or rather, the Italian Allies. Feelings are running high against us, Gaius Marius. As you know, I've been trying to recruit for months. But the Italian Allies refuse to co-operate. When I asked them for Italian Head Count since they insist they've no propertied men left of an age for service they said they had no Head Count either!" "Well, they're rural peoples, I suppose it's possible," said Marius. "Nonsense! Sharecroppers, shepherds, migrating field workers, free farm laborers when has any rural community not had plenty of their like? But the Italian Allies insist there is no Italian Head Count! Why? I asked them in a letter. Because, they said, any Italian men who might have qualified as Head Count were now all Roman slaves, mostly taken for debt bondage. Oh, it is very bitter!" said Rutilius Rufus gravely. "Every Italian nation has written in strong terms to the Senate protesting at its treatment by Rome not just official Rome, mark you, but private Roman citizens in positions of power too. The Marsi the Paeligni the Picentines the Umbrians the Samnites the Apulians the Lucanians the Etrurians the Marrucini the Vestini the list is complete, Gaius Marius!" "Well, we've known there's trouble brewing for a long time," said Marius. "My hope is that the common threat of the Germans knits up our rapidly unraveling peninsula." "I don't think it will," said Rutilius Rufus. "All the nations say that Rome has taken to keeping their propertied men away from home so long that their farms or businesses have fallen into bankruptcy from inadequate care, and all the men lucky enough to have survived a career fighting for Rome have come home to find themselves in debt to Roman landowners or local businessmen with the Roman citizenship. Thus, they say, Rome already owns their Head Count as slaves scattered from one end of the Middle Sea to the other! Particularly, they say, where Rome needs slaves with agricultural skills Africa, Sardinia, Sicily." Marius began to look equally uneasy. "I had no idea things had come to such a pass," he said. "I own a lot of land in Etruria myself, and it includes many farms confiscated for debt. But what else can one do? If I didn't buy the farms, Piggle-wiggle or his brother, Dalmaticus, would! I inherited estates in Etruria from my mother Fulcinia's family, which is why I've concentrated on Etruria. But there's no getting away from the fact that I'm a big landowner there.''
"And I'll bet you don't even know what your agents did about the men whose farms you confiscated," said Rutilius. "You're right, I don't," said Marius, looking uncomfortable. ' 'I had no idea there were so many Italians enslaved to us. It's like enslaving Romans!" "Well, we do that too when Romans fall into debt." "Less and less, Publius Rutilius!" "True." "I shall see to the Italian complaint the moment I'm in office," said Gaius Marius with decision. Italian dissatisfaction hovered darkly in the background that December, its nucleus the warlike tribes of the central highlands behind the Tiber and Liris valleys, led by the Marsi and the Samnites. But there were other rumblings as well, aimed more at the privileges of the Roman nobility, and generated by other Roman nobles. The new tribunes of the plebs were very active indeed. Smarting because his father was one of those incompetent generals held in such odium at the moment, Lucius Cassius Longinus tabled a startling law for discussion in a contio meeting of the Plebeian Assembly. All those men whom the Assembly had stripped of their imperium must also lose their seats in the Senate. That was declaring war upon Caepio with a vengeance! For of course it was generally conceded that Caepio, if and when tried for treason under the present system, would be acquitted. Thanks to his power and wealth, he held too many knights in the First and Second Classes in his sway not to be acquitted. But the Plebeian Assembly law stripping him of his seat in the Senate was something quite different. And fight back though Metellus Numidicus and his colleagues did, the bill proceeded on its way toward becoming law. Lucius Cassius was not going to share his father's odium. And then the religious storm broke, burying all other considerations under its fury; since it had its funny side, this was inevitable, given the Roman delight in the ridiculous. When Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus had dropped dead on the rostra during the row about Gaius Marius's standing for the consulship in absentia, he left one loose end behind that it was not in his power to tie up. He was a pontifex, a priest of Rome, and his death left a vacancy in the College of Pontifices. At the time, the Pontifex Maximus was the ageing Lucius Gaecilius Metellus Dalmaticus, and among the priests were Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus, and Publius Licinius Crassus, and Scipio Nasica. New priests were co-opted by the surviving members of the college, a plebeian being replaced by a plebeian, and a patrician by a patrician; the colleges of priests and of augurs normally stood at half-plebeian, half-patrician. According to tradition, the new priest would belong to the same family as the dead priest, thus enabling priesthoods and augurships to pass from father to son, or uncle to nephew, or cousin to cousin. The family honor and dignitas had to be preserved. And naturally Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus Junior, now the head of his branch of the family, expected to be asked to take his father's place as a priest. However, there was a problem, and the problem's name was Scaurus. When the College of Pontifices met to co-opt its new member, Scaurus announced that he was not in favor of giving the dead Ahenobarbus's place to his son. One of his reasons he did not mention aloud, though it underlay everything he said, and loomed equally large in the minds of the thirteen priests who listened to him; namely, that Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus had been a pigheaded, argumentative, irascible, and unlikable man, and had sired a son who was even worse. No Roman nobleman minded the idiosyncrasies of his peers, and every Roman nobleman was prepared to put up with quite a gamut of the less admirable character traits; provided, that is, that he could get away from these fellows. But the priestly colleges were close-knit and met within the cramped confines of the Regia, the little office of the Pontifex Maximus and young Ahenobarbus was only thirty-three years old. To those like Scaurus who had suffered his father for many years, the idea of suffering the son was not at all attractive. And, as luck would have it, Scaurus had two valid reasons to offer his fellow priests when moving that the new place not go to young Ahenobarbus. The first was that when Marcus Livius Drusus the censor had died, his priesthood had not gone to his son, nineteen at the time. This had been felt to be just a little too underage. The second was that young Marcus Livius Drusus was suddenly displaying alarming tendencies to abandon his natural inheritance of intense conservatism; Scaurus felt that if he was given his father's priesthood, it would draw him back into the fold of his tradition-bound ancestors. His father had been an obdurate enemy of Gaius Gracchus, yet the way young Drusus was carrying on in the Forum Romanum, he sounded more like Gaius Gracchus! There were extenuating circumstances, Scaurus argued, particularly the shock of Arausio. So, what nicer and better way could there be than to co-opt young Drusus into his father's priestly college? The thirteen other priests, including Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus, thought this was a splendid way out of the Ahenobarbus dilemma, particularly because old Ahenobarbus had secured an augurship for his younger son, Lucius, not long before he died. The family could not therefore argue that it was utterly devoid of priestly clout. But when Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus the younger heard that his expected priesthood was going to Marcus Livius Drusus, he was not pleased. In fact, he was outraged. At the next meeting of the Senate he announced that he was going to prosecute Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus on charges of sacrilege. The occasion had been the adoption of a patrician by a plebeian, this complicated affair needing a sanction from the College of Pontifices as well as the Lictors of the Thirty Curiae; young Ahenobarbus alleged that Scaurus had not attended to the requirements properly. Well aware of the real reason behind this sudden espousal of sacerdotal punctiliousness, the House was not a bit impressed. Nor was Scaurus, who simply got to his feet and looked down his nose at the puce-faced Ahenobarbus. "Do you, Gnaeus Domitius not even a pontifex! accuse me, Marcus Aemilius, pontifex and Leader of the House, of sacrilege?" asked Scaurus in freezing tones. "Run away and play with your new toys in the Plebeian Assembly until you finally grow up!" And that seemed the end of the matter. Ahenobarbus flounced out of the House amid roars of laughter, catcalls, cries of "Sore loser!" But Ahenobarbus wasn't beaten yet. Scaurus had told him to run away and play with his new toys in the Plebeian Assembly, so that was precisely what he would do! Within two days he had tabled a new bill, and before the old year was done he had pushed it through the discussion and voting processes into formal law. In future, new members for priesthoods and for augurships would not be co-opted by the surviving members, said the lex Domitia de sacerdotiis; they would be elected by a special tribal assembly, and anyone would be able to stand. "Ducky," said Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus to Scaurus. "Just ducky!" But Scaurus only laughed and laughed. "Oh, Lucius Caecilius, admit he's twisted our pontifical tails beautifully!" he said, wiping his eyes. "I like him the better for it, I must say." "The next one of us to pop off, he's going to be running for election," said Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus gloomily. "And why not? He's earned it," said Scaurus. "But what if it's me? He'd be Pontifex Maximus as well!" "What a wonderful comeuppance for all of us that would be!" said Scaurus, impenitent. "I hear he's after Marcus Junius Silanus now," said Metellus Numidicus. "That's right, for illegally starting a war with the Germans in Gaul-across-the-Alps," said Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus. "Well, he can have the Plebeian Assembly try Silanus for that, where a treason charge means going to the Centuries," said Scaurus, and whistled. "He's good, you know! I begin to regret that we didn't co-opt him to take his father's place." "Oh, rubbish, you do not!" said Metellus Numidicus. "You are enjoying every moment of this ghastly fiasco." "And why shouldn't I?" asked Scaurus, feigning surprise. "This is Rome, Conscript Fathers! Rome as Rome ought to be! All of us noblemen engaged in healthy competition!" "Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish!" cried Metellus Numidicus, still seething because Gaius Marius would be consul very soon. "Rome as we know it is dying! Men elected consul a second time within three years and who weren't even present in Rome to show themselves in the toga Candida the Head Count admitted into the legions priests and augurs elected the Senate's decisions about who will govern what overturned by the People the State paying out fortunes to field Rome's armies New Men and recent arrivals running things tchah!"
THE SEVENTH YEAR (104 - 102 B.C.) IN THE CONSULSHIP OF GAIUS MARIUS (II) AND GAIUS FLAVIUS FIMBRIA
THE EIGHTH YEAR IN THE CONSULSHIP OF GAIUS MARIUS (III) AND LUCIUS AURELIUS ORESTES
THE NINTH YEAR (102 B.C.) IN THE CONSULSHIP OF GAIUS MARIUS (IV) AND QUINTUS LUTATIUS CATULUS CAESAR
It had been left to Sulla to organize Marius's triumphal parade; he followed orders scrupulously despite his inner misgivings, these being due to the result of Marius's instructions. "I want the triumph over and done with quick-smart," Marius had said to Sulla in Puteoli when they had first landed from Africa. "Up on the Capitol by the sixth hour of day at the very latest, then straight into the consular inaugurations and the meeting of the Senate. Rush through the lot, because I've decided it's the feast must be memorable. After all, it's my feast twice over, I'm a triumphing general as well as the new senior consul. So I want a first-class spread, Lucius Cornelius! No hard-boiled eggs and run-of-the-mill cheeses, d'you hear? Food of the best and most expensive sort, dancers and singers and musicians of the best and most expensive sort, the plate gold and the couches purple." Sulla had listened to all this with a sinking heart. He will never be anything but a peasant with social aspirations, Sulla thought; the hurried parade and hasty consular ceremonies followed by a feast of the kind he's ordered is poor form. Especially that vulgarly splashy feast! However, he followed instructions to the letter. Carts carrying clay tanks waxed inside to make them waterproof trundled trays of Baiae oysters and Campanian crayfish and Crater Bay shrimps into Rome, while other carts similarly fitted out trundled freshwater eels and pikes and bass from the upper reaches of the Tiber; a team of expert licker-fishermen were stationed around Rome's sewer outlets; fattened on a diet of honey cakes soaked in wine, capons and ducks, piglets and kids, pheasants and baby deer were sent to the caterers for roasting and stuffing, forcing and larding; a big consignment of giant snails had come from Africa with Marius and Sulla, compliments of Publius Vagiennius, who wanted a report on Roman gourmet reactions. So Marius's triumphal parade Sulla kept businesslike and brisk, thinking to himself that when his triumph came, he'd make it so big it took three days to travel the ancient route, just like Aemilius Paullus. For to expend time and splendor upon a triumph was the mark of the aristocrat, anxious to have the people share in the treat; whereas to expend time and splendor upon the feast in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus that followed was the mark of the peasant, anxious to impress a privileged few. Nevertheless, Sulla succeeded in making the triumphal parade memorable. There were floats showing all the highlights of the African campaigns, from the snails of Muluchath to the amazing Martha the Syrian prophetess; she was the star of the pageant displays, reclining on a purple-and-gold couch atop a huge float arranged as a facsimile of Prince Gauda's throne room in Old Carthage, with an actor portraying Gaius Marius, and another actor filling Gauda's twisted shoes. On a lavishly ornamented flat-topped dray, Sulla caused all of Marius's personal military decorations to be carried. There were cartloads of plunder, cartloads of trophies consisting of enemy suits of armor, cartloads of important exhibits all of these arranged so that the onlookers could see and exclaim over individual items plus cartloads of caged lions, apes and bizarre monkeys, and two dozen elephants to walk flapping their vast ears. The six legions of the African army were all to march, but had to be deprived of spears and daggers and swords, carrying instead wooden staves wreathed in victory laurels. "And pick up your heels and march, you cunni!" cried Marius to his soldiers on the scuffed sward of the Villa Publica as the parade was ready to move off. "I have to be on the Capitol by the sixth hour myself, so I won't be able to keep an eye on you. But no god will help you if you disgrace me hear me, fellatores?' They loved it when he talked to them obscenely; but then, reflected Sulla, they loved him no matter how he talked to them.
Jugurtha marched too, clad in his kingly purple robes, his head bound for the last time with the tasseled white ribbon called the diadem, all his golden jeweled necklaces and rings and bracelets flashing in the early sun, for it was a perfect winter's day, neither unspeakably cold nor inconveniently windy. Both Jugurtha's sons were with him, purple clad too. When Marius had returned Jugurtha to Rome Jugurtha could hardly believe it, so sure had he been when he and Bomilcar quit Rome that he would never, never be back. The terracotta city of the brilliant colors painted columns, vivid walls, statues everywhere looking so lifelike the observer expected them to start orating or fighting or galloping or weeping. Nothing whitely African about Rome, which did not build much in mud brick anymore, and never whitewashed its walls, but painted them instead. The hills and cliffs, the parklike spaces, the pencil cypresses and the umbrella pines, the high temples on their tall podiums with winged Victories driving four-horsed quadrigae on the very crests of the pediments, the slowly greening scar of the great fire on the Viminal and upper Esquiline. Rome, the city for sale. And what a tragedy, that he'd not been able to find the money to buy it! How differently things might have turned out, had he. Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus had taken him in, an honored houseguest who yet was not permitted to step outside the house. It had been dark when they smuggled him in, and there for months he had remained, disbarred from the loggia which overlooked the Forum Romanum and the Capitol, limited to pacing up and down the peristyle-garden like the lion he felt himself. His pride would not let him go to seed; every day he ran in one spot, he touched his toes, he shadowboxed, he lifted himself up until his chin touched the bough he had chosen as a bar. For when he walked in Gaius Marius's triumphal parade, he wanted them to admire him, those ordinary Romans wanted to be sure they took him for a formidable opponent, not a flabby Oriental potentate. With Metellus Numidicus he had kept himself aloof, declining to pander to one Roman's ego at the expense of another's a great disappointment to his host, he sensed at once. Numidicus had hoped to gather evidence that Marius had abused his position as proconsul. That Numidicus got nothing instead was a secret pleasure to Jugurtha, who knew which Roman he had feared, and which Roman he was glad had been the one to beat him. Certainly Numidicus was a great noble, and had integrity of a sort, but as a man and a soldier he couldn't even reach up to touch Gaius Marius's bootlaces. Of course, as far as Metellus Numidicus was concerned, Gaius Marius was little better than a bastard; so Jugurtha, who knew all about bastardy, remained committed to Gaius Marius in a queer and pitiless comradeship. On the night before Gaius Marius was to enter Rome in triumph and as consul for the second time, Metellus Numidicus and his speech-bereft son had Jugurtha and his two sons to dinner. The only other guest was Publius Rutilius Rufus, for whom Jugurtha had asked. Of those who had fought together at Numantia under Scipio Aemilianus, only Gaius Marius was absent. It was a very odd evening. Metellus Numidicus had gone to enormous lengths to produce a sumptuous feast for, as he said, he had no intention of eating at Gaius Marius's expense after the inaugural meeting of the Senate in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. "But there's scarcely a crayfish or an oyster left to buy, or a snail, or anything extra-special," said Numidicus as they prepared to dine. "Marius cleaned the markets out." "Can you blame him?" asked Jugurtha, when Rutilius Rufus would not. "I blame Gaius Marius for everything," said Numidicus. "You shouldn't. If you could have produced him from your own ranks of the high nobility, Quintus Caecilius, well and good. But you could not. Rome produced Gaius Marius. I don't mean Rome the city or Rome the nation I mean Roma, the immortal goddess, the genius of the city, the moving spirit. A man is needed. A man is found," said Jugurtha of Numidia. “There are those of us with the right birth and background who could have done what Gaius Marius has done," said Numidicus stubbornly. "In fact, it ought to have been me. Gaius Marius stole my imperium, and tomorrow is reaping my rewards." The faint look of incredulity on Jugurtha's face annoyed him, and he added, a little waspishly, "For instance, it wasn't really Gaius Marius who captured you, King. Your captor had the right birth and ancestral background Lucius Cornelius Sulla. It could be said and in the form of a valid syllogism! that Lucius Cornelius ended the war, not Gaius Marius." He drew a breath, and sacrificed his own claim to pre-eminence upon the more logical aristocratic altar named Lucius Cornelius Sulla. "In fact, Lucius Cornelius has all the earmarks of a right-thinking, properly Roman Gaius Marius." "No!" scoffed Jugurtha, aware that Rutilius Rufus,. was watching him fixedly. "He's a pard with very different spots, that one. Gaius Marius is straighter, if you know what I mean." "I don't have the remotest idea what you mean," said Numidicus stiffly. "I know exactly what you mean," said Rutilius Rufus, and smiled delightedly. Jugurtha grinned the old Numantia grin at Rutilius Rufus. "Gaius Marius is a freak," he said, "a perfect fruit from an overlooked and ordinary tree growing just outside the orchard wall. Such men cannot be stopped or deflected, my dear Quintus Caecilius. They have the heart, the guts, the brains, and the streak of immortality to surmount every last obstacle set in their way. The gods love them! On them, the gods lavish all of Fortune's bounty. So a Gaius Marius travels straight, and when he is compelled to walk crookedly, his path is still straight." "How right you are!" said Rutilius Rufus. "Luh-Luh-Lucius Cor-Cor-Cornelius is buh-buh-buh-better!" young Metellus Piglet said angrily. "No!" said Jugurtha, shaking his head for emphasis. "Our friend Lucius Cornelius has the brains . .. and the guts .. . and maybe the heart.. . but I don't think he has the streak of immortality inside his mind. The crooked way feels natural to him; he sees it as the straighter way. There's no war elephant about a man who's happier astride a mule. Oh, brave as a bull! In a battle, there's no one quicker to lead a charge, or form up a relief column, or dash into a gap, or turn a fleeing century around. But Lucius Cornelius doesn't hear Mars. Where Gaius Marius never not hears Mars. I presume, by the way, that 'Marius' is some Latin distortion of 'Mars'? The son of Mars, perhaps? You don't know? Nor do you want to know, Quintus Caecilius, I suspect! A pity. It's an extremely powerful-sounding language, Latin. Very crisp, yet rolling." "Tell me more about Lucius Cornelius Sulla," said Rutilius Rufus, choosing a piece of fresh white bread and the plainest-looking egg. Jugurtha was wolfing down snails, not having tasted one since his exile began. "What's to tell? He's a product of his class. Everything he does, he does well. Well enough that nine out of ten witnesses will never be able to fathom whether he's a natural at what he's doing, or just a very intelligent and thoroughly schooled unnatural. But in the time I spent with him, I never got a spark out of him that told me what was his natural bent or his proper sphere, for that matter. Oh, he will win wars and run governments, of that I have no doubt but never with the spirit side of his mind." The garlic-and-oil sauce was slicked all over the guest of honor's chin; he ceased talking while a servant scrubbed and polished shaven and bearded parts, then belched enormously, and continued. "He'll always choose expedience, because he's lacking in the sticking power only that streak of immortality inside the mind can give a man. If two alternatives are presented to Lucius Cornelius, he'll pick the one he thinks will get him where he wants to be with the least outlay. He's just not as thorough as Gaius Marius or as clear-sighted, I suspect." "Huh-huh-huh-how duh-duh-do you know so muh-muh-muh-much about Luh-Luh-Luh-Lucius Cornelius?" asked Metellus Piglet. "I shared a remarkable ride with him once," said Jugurtha reflectively, using a toothpick. "And then we shared a voyage along the African coast from Icosium to Utica. We saw a lot of each other." And the way he said that made all the others wonder just how many meanings it contained. But no one asked. The salads came out, and then the roasts. Metellus Numidicus and his guests set to again, and with relish, save for the two young princes Iampsas and Oxyntas. "They want to die with me," Jugurtha explained to Ru-tilius Rufus, low-voiced. "It wouldn't be countenanced," said Rutilius Rufus. "So I've told them." "Do they know where they're going?" "Oxyntas to the town of Venusia, wherever that might be, and Iampsas to Asculum Picentum, another mystery town." "Venusia's south of Campania, on the road to Brundisium, and Asculum Picentum is northeast of Rome, on the other side of the Apennines. They'll be comfortable enough." "How long will their detention last?" Jugurtha asked. Rutilius Rufus pondered that, then shrugged. "Hard to tell. Some years, certainly. Until the local magistrates write a report to the Senate saying they're thoroughly indoctrinated with Roman attitudes, and won't be a danger to Rome if they're sent home." "Then they'll stay for life, I'm afraid. Better they die with me, Publius Rutilius!" "No, Jugurtha, you can't say that with complete assurance. Who knows what the future holds for them?" "True." The meal went on through more roasts and salads, and ended with sweetmeats, pastries, honeyed confections, cheeses, the few fruits in season, and dried fruits. Only Iampsas and Oxyntas failed to do the meal justice. "Tell me, Quintus Caecilius," said Jugurtha to Metellus Numidicus when the remains of the food were borne away, and unwatered wine of the best vintage was produced, "what will you do if one day another Gaius Marius should appear only this time with all Gaius Marius's gifts and vigor and vision and streak of immortality inside his mind! wearing a patrician Roman skin?" Numidicus blinked. "I don't know what you're getting at, King," he said. "Gaius Marius is Gaius Marius." "He's not necessarily unique," said Jugurtha. "What would you do with a Gaius Marius who came from a patrician family?" "He couldn't," said Numidicus. "Nonsense, of course he could," said Jugurtha, rolling the superb Chian wine around his tongue. “I think what Quintus Caecilius is trying to say, Jugurtha, is that Gaius Marius is a product of his class," said Rutilius Rufus gently. "A Gaius Marius may be of any class," Jugurtha insisted. Now all the Roman heads were shaking a negative in unison. "No," said Rutilius Rufus, speaking for the group. "What you are saying may be true for Numidia, or for any other world. But never true of Rome! No patrician Roman could ever think or act like Gaius Marius." So that was that. After a few more drinks the party broke up, Publius Rutilius Rufus went home to his bed, and the inhabitants of Metellus Numidicus's house scattered to their various beds. In the comfortable aftermath of excellent food, wine, and company, Jugurtha of Numidia slept deeply, peacefully. When he was woken by the slave appointed to serve his needs as valet about two hours before the dawn, Jugurtha got up refreshed and invigorated. He was permitted a hot bath, and great care was devoted to his robing; his hair was coaxed into long, sausagelike curls with heated tongs, and his trim beard curled and then wound about with strings of gold and silver, the clean-shaven areas of cheeks and chin scraped closely. Perfumed with costly unguents, the diadem in place, and all his jewelry (which had already been catalogued by the Treasury clerks, and would go to the dividing of the spoils on the Campus Martius the day after the triumph) distributed about his person, King Jugurtha came out of his chambers the picture of a Hellenized sovereign, and regal from fingertips to toes to top of head. "Today," he said to his sons as they traveled in open sedan chairs to the Campus Martius, "I shall see Rome for the first time in my life." Sulla himself received them amid what seemed a chaotic confusion lit only by torches; but dawn was breaking over the crest of the Esquiline, and Jugurtha suspected the turmoil was due only to the number of people assembled at the Villa Publica, that in reality a streamlined order existed. The chains placed on his person were merely token; where in all Italy could a Punic warrior-king go? "We were talking about you last night," said Jugurtha to Sulla conversationally. "Oh?" asked Sulla, garbed in glittering silver cuirass and pteryges, silver greaves cushioning his shins, a silver Attic helmet crested with fluffy scarlet feathers, and a scarlet military cloak. To Jugurtha, who knew him in a broad-brimmed straw hat, he was a stranger. Behind him, his personal servant carried a frame upon which his decorations for valor were hung, an imposing enough collection. "Yes," said Jugurtha, still conversationally. "There was a debate about which man actually won the war against me Gaius Marius or you." The whitish eyes lifted to rest on Jugurtha's face. "An interesting debate, King. Which side did you take?" "The side of right. I said Gaius Marius won the war. His were the command decisions, his the men involved, including you. And his was the order which sent you to see my father-in-law,' Bocchus." Jugurtha paused, smiled. "However, my only ally was my old friend Publius Rutilius. Quintus Caecilius and his son both maintained that you won the war because you captured me." "You took the side of right," said Sulla. "The side of right is relative." "Not in this case," said Sulla, his plumes nodding in the direction of Marius's milling soldiers. "I will never have his gift of dealing with them. I have no fellow feeling for them, you see." "You hide it well," said Jugurtha. "Oh, they know, believe me," said Sulla. "He won the war, with them. My contribution could have been done by anyone of legatal rank." He drew a deep breath. "I take it you had a pleasant evening, King?" "Most pleasant!" Jugurtha jiggled his chains, and found them very light, easy to carry. "Quintus Caecilius and his stammering son put on a kingly feast for me. If a Numidian was asked which food he would want the night before he died, he would always ask for snails. And last night I had snails." "Then your belly's nice and full, King." Jugurtha grinned. "Indeed it is! The right way to go to the strangler's loop, I'd say." "No, that's my say," said Sulla, whose toothy grin was far darker in his far fairer face. Jugurtha's own grin faded. "What do you mean?" "I'm in charge of the logistics of this triumphal parade, King Jugurtha. Which means I'm the one to say how you die. Normally you'd be strangled with a noose, that's true. But it isn't regulation, there is an alternative method. Namely, to shove you down the hole inside the Tullianum, and leave you to rot." Sulla's grin grew. "After such a kingly meal and especially after trying to sow discord between me and my commanding officer I think it would be a pity if you weren't permitted to finish digesting your snails. So there will be no strangler's noose for you, King! You can die by inches." Luckily his sons were standing too far away to hear; the King watched as Sulla flicked a salute of farewell to him, then watched as the Roman strode to his sons, and checked their chains. He gazed around at the panic all about him, the seething masses of servants doling out head wreaths and garlands of victory laurel leaves, the musicians tuning up their horns and the bizarre horse-headed trumpets Ahenobarbus had brought back from Long-haired Gaul, the dancers practising last-moment twirls, the horses snuffling and blowing snorting breaths as they stamped their hooves impatiently, the oxen hitched to carts in dozens with horns gilded and dewlaps garlanded, a little water donkey wearing a straw hat ludicrously wreathed in laurel and its ears poking up rampant through holes in the crown, a toothlessly raddled old hag with swinging empty breasts and clad from head to foot in purple and gold being hoisted up onto a pageant dray, where she spread herself on a purple-draped litter like the world's greatest courtesan, and stared stared stared straight down into his eyes with eyes like the Hound of Hades surely she should have had three heads… Once it got going, the parade hustled. Usually the Senate and all the magistrates except the consuls marched first, and then some musicians, then dancers and clowns aping the famous; then there came the booty and display floats, after which came more dancers and musicians and clowns escorting the sacrificial animals and their priestly attendants; next came the important prisoners, and the triumphing general driving his antique chariot; and, in last place, the general's legions marched. But Gaius Marius changed the sequence around a bit, preceding his booty and his pageants and his floats, so that he would arrive on the Capitol and sacrifice his beasts in time to be inaugurated afterward as consul, hold the inaugural meeting of the Senate, and then preside at his feast in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Jugurtha found himself able to enjoy his first and last journey on foot through the streets of Rome. What mattered it how he died? A man had to die sooner or later, and his had been a most satisfying life, even if it had ended in defeat. He'd given them a good run for their money, the Romans. His dead brother, Bomilcar... He too had died in a dungeon, come to think of it. Perhaps fratricide displeased the gods, no matter how valid the reason. Well, only the gods had kept count of the number of his blood kin who had perished at his instigation, if not by his own hands. Did that lack of personal participation make his hands clean? Oh, how tall the apartment buildings were! The parade jogged briskly into the Vicus Tuscus of the Velabrum, a part of the city stuffed with insulae, leaning as if they tried to embrace across the narrow alleys by falling on each other's bricky chests. Every window held faces, every face cheered, and he was amazed that they cheered for him too, urged him on to his death with words of encouragement and best wishes. And then the parade skirted the edges of the Meat Market, the Forum Boarium, where the statue of naked Hercules Triumphalis was all decked out for the day in the general's triumphal regalia purple-and-gold toga picta, palm-embroidered purple tunica palmata, the laurel branch in one hand and the eagle-topped ivory scepter in the other, and his face painted bright red with minim. The meaty business of the day was clearly suspended, for the magnificent temples on the borders of the huge marketplace were cleared of booths and stalls. There! The temple of Ceres, called the most beautiful in the entire city and beautiful it was in a garish way, painted in reds and blues and greens and yellows, high on a podium like all Roman temples; it was, Jugurtha knew, the headquarters of the Plebeian Order, and housed their records and their aediles. The parade now turned into the interior of the Circus Maximus, a greater structure than he had ever seen; it stretched the whole length of the Palatine, and seated about a hundred and fifty thousand people. Every one of its stepped wooden tiers was packed with cheering onlookers for Gaius Marius's triumphal parade; from where he walked not far in front of Marius, Jugurtha could hear the cheers swell to screams of adulation for the general. No one minded the hasty pace, for Marius had sent out his clients and agents to whisper to the crowds that he hurried because he cared for Rome; he hurried so he could leave all the quicker for Gaul-across-the-Alps and the Germans. The leafy spaces and magnificent mansions of the Palatine were thronged with watchers too, above the level of the herd, safe from assault and robbery, women and nursemaids and girls and boys of good family mostly, he had been told. They turned out of the Circus Maximus into the Via Triumphalis, which skirted the far end of the Palatine and had rocks and parklands above it on the left, and on the right, clustering below the Caelian Hill, yet another district of towering apartment blocks. Then came the Palus Ceroliae the swamp below the Carinae and the Fagutal and finally a turn into the Velia and the downhill trip to the Forum Romanum along the worn cobbles of the ancient sacred way, the Via Sacra. At last he would see it, the center of the world, just as in olden days the Acropolis had been the center of the world. And then he set eyes on it, the Forum Romanum, and was hugely disappointed. The buildings were little and old, and they didn't face a logical way, for they were all skewed to the north, where the Forum itself was oriented northwest to southeast; the overall effect was slipshod, and the whole place wore an air of dilapidation. Even the newer buildings which did at least face the Forum at a proper angle were not kept up well. In fact, the buildings along the way had been far more imposing, and the temples along the way bigger, richer, grander. The houses of the priests did sport fairly new coats of paint, admittedly, and the little round temple of Vesta was pretty, but only the very lofty temple of Castor and Pollux and the vast Doric austerity of the temple of Saturn were at all eye-catching, admirable examples of their kind. A drab and cheerless place, sunk down in a queer valley, damp and unlovely. Opposite the temple of Saturn from the podium of which the senior Treasury officials watched the parade Jugurtha and his sons and those among his barons and his wives who had been captured were led out of the procession and put to one side; they stood to watch the lictors of the general, his dancers and musicians and censer bearers, his drummers and trumpeters, his legates, and then the chariot-borne general himself, remote and unrecognizable in all his regalia and with his minim-painted red face, pass by. They all went up the hill to where the great temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus presented its pillared side to the Forum, for it too was skewed north-south. Its front looked south. South to Numidia. Jugurtha looked at his sons. "Live long and live well," he said to them; they were going into custody in remote Roman towns, but his barons and his wives were going home to Numidia. The guard of lictors who surrounded the King nudged his chains a little, and he walked across the crowded flags of the lower Forum, beneath the trees around the Pool of Curtius and the statue of the satyr Marsyas blowing his oboe, around the edge of the vast tiered well which saw meetings of the Tribes, and up to the start of the Clivus Argentarius. Above was the Arx of the Capitol and the temple of Juno Moneta, where the mint was housed. And there was the ancient shabby Senate House across the far side of the Comitia, and beyond it the small shabby Basilica Porcia, built by Cato the Censor. But that was as far as his walk through Rome took him. The Tullianum stood in the lap of the Arx hill just beyond the Steps of Gemortia, a very tiny grey edifice built of the huge unmortared stones men all over the world called Cyclopean; it was only one storey high and had only one opening, a doorless rectangular gap in the stones. Fancying himself too tall, Jugurtha ducked his head as he came to it, but passed inside with ease, for it turned out to be taller than any mortal man. His lictors stripped him of his robes, his jewels, his diadem, and handed them to the Treasury clerks waiting to receive them; a docket changed hands, officially acknowledging that this State property was being properly disposed of. Jugurtha was left only the loincloth Metellus Numidicus had advised him to wear, for Metellus Numidicus knew the rite. The fountainhead of his physical being decently covered, a man could go to his death decently. The only illumination came from the aperture behind him, but by its light Jugurtha could see the round hole in the middle of the roundish floor. Down there was where they would put him. Had he been scheduled for the noose, the strangler would have accompanied him into the lower regions with sufficient helpers to restrain him, and when the deed was done, and his body tossed down into one of the drain openings, those who still lived would have climbed up a ladder to Rome and their world. But Sulla must have found time to countermand the normal procedure, for no strangler was present. Someone produced a ladder, but Jugurtha waved it aside. He stepped up to the edge of the hole, then stepped into space without a sound issuing from his lips; what words were there to mark this event? The thud of his landing was almost immediate, for the lower cell was not deep. Having heard it, the escort turned in silence and left the place. No one lidded the hole; no one barred the entrance. For no one ever climbed out of the awful pit beneath the Tullianum.
Two white oxen and one white bull were Marius's share of the sacrifices that day, but only the oxen belonged to his triumph. He left his four-horse chariot at the foot of the steps up to the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, and ascended them alone. Inside the main room of the temple he laid his laurel branch and his laurel wreaths at the foot of the statue of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, after which his lictors filed inside and their laurel wreaths too were offered to the god. It was just noon. No triumphal parade had ever gone so quickly; but the rest of it which was the bulk of it was proceeding at a more leisurely pace, so the people would have plenty of time to see the pageants, floats, booty, trophies, soldiers. Now came the real business of Marius's day. Down the steps to the assembled senators came Gaius Marius, face painted red, toga purple and gold, tunic embroidered with palm fronds, and in his right hand the ivory scepter. He walked briskly, his mind bent upon getting the inauguration over, his costume a minor inconvenience he could endure. "Well, let's get on with it!" he said impatiently. Utter silence greeted this directive. No one moved, no one betrayed what he was thinking by an expression on his face. Even Marius's colleague Gaius Flavius Fimbria and the outgoing consul Publius Rutilius Rufus (Gnaeus Mallius Maximus had sent word that he was ill) just stood there. "What's the matter with you?" Marius asked testily. Out of the crowd stepped Sulla, no longer martial in his silver parade armor, but properly togate. He was smiling broadly, his hand outstretched, every inch of him the helpful and attentive quaestor. "Gaius Marius, Gaius Marius, you've forgotten!" he cried loudly, reaching Marius and swinging him round with unexpected strength in his grip. "Get home and change, man!" he whispered. Marius opened his mouth to argue, then he caught a secret look of glee on Metellus Numidicus's face, and with superb timing he put his hand up to his face, brought it down to look at its reddened palm. "Ye gods!" he exclaimed, face comical. "I do apologize, Conscript Fathers," he said as he moved toward them again. "I know I'm in a hurry to get to the Germans, but this is ridiculous! Please excuse me. I'll be back as soon as I possibly can. The general's regalia even triumphal! cannot be worn to a meeting of the Senate within the pomerium." And as he marched away across the Asylum toward the Arx, he called over his shoulder, "I thank you, Lucius Cornelius!" Sulla broke away from the silent spectators and ran after him, not something every man could do in a toga; but he did it well, even made it look natural. "I do thank you," said Marius to him when Sulla caught up. "But what on earth does it really matter? Now they've all got to stand around in the freezing wind for an hour while I wash this stuff off and put on my toga praetexta!" "It matters to them," said Sulla, "and I do believe it matters to me too." His shorter legs were moving faster than Marius's. "You're going to need the senators, Gaius Marius, so please don't antagonize them any further today! They weren't impressed at being obliged to share their inauguration with your triumph, to start with. So don't rub their noses in it!" "All right, all right!" Marius sounded resigned. He took the steps that led from the Arx to the back door of his house three at a time, and charged through the door so violently that its custodian fell flat on his face and started to shriek in terror. "Shut up, man, I'm not the Gauls and this is now, not three hundred years ago!" he said, and started to yell for his valet, and his wife, and his bath servant. "It's all laid out ready," said that queen among women, Julia, smiling peacefully. "I thought you'd arrive in your usual hurry. Your bath is hot, everyone is waiting to help, so off you go, Gaius Marius." She turned to Sulla with her lovely smile. "Welcome, my brother. It's turned cold, hasn't it? Do come into my sitting room and warm yourself by the brazier while I find you some mulled wine." "You were right, it is freezing," said Sulla, taking the beaker from his sister-in-law when she came back bearing it. "I've got used to Africa. Chasing after the Great Man, I thought I was hot, but now I'm perished." She sat down opposite him, head cocked inquisitively. "What went wrong?" she asked. "Oh, you are a wife," he said, betraying his bitterness. "Later, Lucius Cornelius," she said. "Tell me what went wrong first." He smiled wryly, shaking his head. "You know, Julia, I do love that man as much as I can love any man," he said, "but at times I could toss him to the Tullianum strangler as easily as I could an enemy!" Julia chuckled. "So could I," she said soothingly. "It is quite normal, you know. He's a Great Man, and they're very hard to live with. What did he do?" "He tried to participate in the inauguration wearing his full triumphal dress," said Sulla. "Oh, my dear brother! I suppose he made a fuss about the waste of time, and antagonized them all?" asked the Great Man's loyal but lucid wife. "Luckily I saw what he was going to do even through all that red paint on his face." Sulla grinned. "It's his eyebrows. After three years with Gaius Marius, anyone except a fool reads his mind from the antics of his eyebrows. They wriggle and bounce in code well, you'd know, you're certainly no fool!" "Yes, I do know," she said with an answering grin. "Anyway, I got to him first, and yelled out something or other to the effect that he'd forgotten. Phew! I held my breath for a moment or two, though, because it was on the tip of his tongue to tell me to take a running jump into the Tiber. Then he saw Quintus Caecilius Numidicus just waiting, and he changed his mind. What an actor! I imagine everyone except Publius Rutilius was fooled into thinking he had genuinely forgotten what he was wearing." "Oh, thank you, Lucius Cornelius!" said Julia. "It was my pleasure," he said, and meant it. "More hot wine?" "Thank you, yes." When she returned, she bore a plate of steaming buns as well. "Here, these just came out of the pot. Yeasty and filled with sausage. They're awfully good! Our cook makes them for Young Marius all the time. He's going through that dreadful stage where he won't eat anything he should." "My two eat anything that's put in front of them," Sulla said, face lighting up. "Oh, Julia, they're lovely! I never realized anything living could be so so perfect*" "I'm rather fond of them myself," said their aunt. "I wish Julilla was," he said, face darkening. "I know," said Julilla's sister softly. "What is the matter with her? Do you know?" "I think we spoiled her too much. Father and Mother didn't want a fourth child, you know. They'd had two boys, and when I came along they didn't mind a girl to round the family out. But Julilla was a shock. And we were too poor. So then when she grew up a little, everyone felt sorry for her, I think. Especially Mother and Father, because they hadn't wanted her. Whatever she did, we found an excuse for. If there was a spare sestertius or two, she got them to fritter away, and was never chided for frittering them away. I suppose the flaw was there all along, but we didn't help her to cope with it where we should have taught her patience and forbearance, we didn't. Julilla grew up fancying herself the most important person in the world, so she grew up selfish and self-centered and self-excusing. We are largely to blame. But poor Julilla is the one who must suffer.'' "She drinks too much," said Sulla. "Yes, I know." "And she hardly ever bothers with the children." The tears came to Julia's eyes. "Yes, I know." "What can I do?" "Well, you could divorce her," said Julia, the tears now trickling down her face. Out went Sulla's hands, smeared with the contents of a bun. "How can I do that when I'm going to be away from Rome myself for however long it takes to defeat the Germans? And she's the mother of my children. I did love her as much as I can love anyone." "You keep saying that, Lucius Cornelius. If you love you love! Why should you love any less than other men?" But that was too near the bone. He closed up. "I didn't grow up with any love, so I never learned how," he said, trotting out his conventional excuse. "I don't love her anymore. In fact, I think I hate her. But she's the mother of my daughter and my son, and until the Germans are a thing of the past at least, Julilla is all they have. If I divorced her, she'd do something theatrical go mad, or kill herself, or triple the amount of wine she drinks or some other equally desperate and thoughtless alternative." "Yes, you're right, divorce isn't the answer. She would definitely damage the children more than she can at present." Julia sighed, wiped her eyes. "Actually there are two troubled women in our family at the moment. May I suggest a different solution?" "Anything, please!" cried Sulla. "Well, my mother's the second troubled woman, you see. She isn't happy living with Brother Sextus and his wife and their son. Most of the trouble between her and my Claudian sister-in-law is because my mother still regards herself as the mistress of the house. They fight constantly. Claudians are headstrong and domineering, and all the women of that family are brought up to rather despise the old female virtues, where my mother is the exact opposite," Julia explained, shaking her head sadly. Sulla tried to look intelligent and at ease with all this female logic, but said nothing. Julia struggled on. "Mama changed after my father's death. I don't suppose any of us ever realized how strong the bond was between them, or how heavily she relied on his wisdom and his direction. So she's become crotchety and fidgety and fault finding oh, sometimes intolerably critical! Gaius Marius saw how unhappy the situation was at home, and offered to buy Mama a villa on the sea somewhere so poor Sextus could have peace. But she flew at him like a spitting cat, and said she knew when she wasn't wanted, and may she be treated like an oath breaker if she gave up residence in her house. Oh, dear!" "I gather you're suggesting that I invite Marcia to live with Julilla and me," said Sulla, "but why should this suggestion appeal to her when the villa by the sea didn't work?" "Because she knew Gaius Marius's suggestion was simply a way of getting rid of her, and she's far too cantankerous these days to oblige poor Sextus's wife," said Julia frankly. "To invite her to live with you and Julilla is quite different. She would be living next door, for one thing. And for another, she'd be wanted. Useful. And she could keep an eye on Julilla." "Would she want to?" Sulla asked, scratching his head. "I gather from what Julilla's said that she never comes to visit at all, in spite of the fact she's living right next door." "She and Julilla fight too," said Julia, beginning to grin as her worry faded. "Oh, do they! Julilla only has to set eyes on her coming through the front door, and she orders her home again. But if you were to invite her to make her home with you, then Julilla can't do a thing." Sulla was grinning too. "It sounds as if you're determined to make my house a Tartarus," he said. Julia lifted one brow. "Will that worry you, Lucius Cornelius? After all, you'll be away." Dipping his hands in the bowl of water a servant was holding out to him, Sulla lifted one of his own brows. "I thank you, sister-in-law." He got up, leaned over, and kissed Julia on the cheek. "I shall see Marcia tomorrow, and ask her to come and live with us. And I will be absolutely outspoken about my reasons for wanting her. So long as I know my children are being loved, I can bear being separated from them." "Are they not well cared for by your slaves?" Julia asked, rising too. "Oh, the slaves pamper and spoil them," said their father. "I will say this, Julilla acquired some excellent girls for the nursery. But that's to make them into slaves, Julia! Little Greeks or Thracians or Celts or whatever other nationality the nurserymaids might happen to be. Full of outlandish superstitions and customs, thinking first in other languages than Latin, regarding their parents and relatives as some sort of remote authority figures. I want my children reared properly in the Roman way, by a Roman woman. It ought to be their mother. But since I doubt that will happen, I cannot think of a better alternative than their stouthearted Marcian grandmother." "Good," said Julia. They moved toward the door. "Is Julilla unfaithful to me?" he asked abruptly. Julia didn't pretend horror or experience anger. "I very much doubt that, Lucius Cornelius. Wine is her vice, not men. You're a man, so you deem men a far worse vice than wine. I do not agree. I think wine can do your children more damage than infidelity. An unfaithful woman doesn't stop noticing her children, nor does she burn her house down. A drunken woman does." She flapped her hand. "The important thing is, let's put Mama to work!" Gaius Marius erupted into the room, respectably clad in purple-bordered toga and looking every inch the consul. "Come on, come on, Lucius Cornelius! Let's get back and finish the performance before the sun goes down and the moon comes up!" Wife and brother-in-law exchanged rueful smiles, and off went the two men to the inauguration.
Marius did what he could to mollify the Italian Allies. "They are not Romans," he said to the House on the occasion of its first proper meeting, on the Nones of January, "but they are our closest allies in all our enterprises, and they share the peninsula of Italy with us. They also share the burden of providing troops to defend Italy, and they have not been well served. Nor has Rome. As you are aware, Conscript Fathers, at the moment a sorry business is working itself out in the Plebeian Assembly, where the consular Marcus Junius Silanus is defending himself against a charge brought against him by the tribune of the plebs Gnaeus Domitius. Though the word 'treason' has not been used, the implication is clear: Marcus Junius is one of those consular commanders of recent years who lost a whole army, including legions of Italian Allied men." He turned to look straight at Silanus, in the House today because the Nones were fasti days of holiday or business and the Plebeian Assembly could not meet. "It is not my place today to level any kind of charge at Marcus Junius. I simply state a fact. Let other bodies and other men deal with Marcus Junius in litigation. I simply state a fact. Marcus Junius has no need to speak in defense of his actions here today because of me. I simply state a fact." Deliberately he cleared his throat, the pause offering Silanus an opportunity to say something, anything; but Silanus sat in stony silence, pretending Marius didn't exist. "I simply state a fact, Conscript Fathers. Nothing more, nothing less. A fact is a fact." "Oh, do get on with it!" said Metellus Numidicus wearily. Marius bowed grandly, his smile wide. "Why, thank you, Quintus Caecilius! How could I not get on with it, having been invited to do so by such an august and notable consular as yourself?" "'August' and 'notable' mean the same thing, Gaius Marius," said Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus, with a weariness quite the equal of his younger brother's. "You would save this House considerable time if you spoke a less tautologous kind of Latin." "I do beg the august and notable consular Lucius Caecilius's pardon," said Marius with another grand bow, "but in this highly democratic society of ours, the House is open to all Romans, even those like myself who cannot claim to be august and notable." He pretended to search his mind, the eyebrows meeting in hairy abandon across his nose. "Now where was I? Oh, yes! The burden the Italian Allies share with us Romans, of providing troops to defend Italy. One of the objections to providing troops raised in the current spate of letters from the magistrates of the Samnites, the Apulians, the Marsi, and others" he took a sheaf of small rolls from one of his clerks and showed it to the House "concerns the legality of our asking the Italian Allies to provide troops for campaigns outside the borders of Italy and Italian Gaul. The Italian Allies, august and notable Conscript Fathers, maintain that they have been providing troops and losing many, many thousands of these troops! for Rome's and I quote the letters 'foreign wars'!" The senators mumbled, rumbled. "That allegation is completely unfounded!" snapped Scaurus. "Rome's enemies are also Italy's enemies!" "I only quote the letters, Marcus Aemilius Princeps Senatus," said Marius soothingly. "We should all be aware of what is in them, for the simple reason that I imagine this House will shortly be obliged to receive embassages from all the Italian nations who have expressed their discontent in these very many letters." His voice changed, lost its mildly bantering tone. "Well, enough of this skirmishing! We are living in a peninsula cheek by jowl with our Italian friends who are not Romans, and never can be Romans. That they have been elevated to their present position of importance in the world is due purely to the great achievements of Rome and Romans. That Italian nationals are present in large numbers throughout the provinces and spheres of Roman influence is due purely to the great achievements of Rome and Romans. The bread on their tables, the winter fires in their cellars, the health and number of their children, they owe to Rome and Romans. Before Rome, there was chaos. Complete disunity. Before Rome, there were the cruel Etruscan kings in the north of the peninsula, and the greedy Greeks in the south. Not to mention the Celts of Gaul." The House had settled down. When Gaius Marius spoke in serious vein everybody listened, even those who were his most obdurate enemies. For the Military Man blunt and forthright though he was was a powerful orator in his native Latin, and so long as his feelings were governed, his accent was not noticeably different from Scaurus's. "Conscript Fathers, you and the People of Rome have given me a mandate to rid us and Italy! of the Germans. As soon as possible, I will be taking the propraetor Manius Aquillius and the valiant senator Lucius Cornelius Sulla with me as my legates to Gaul-across-the-Alps. If it costs us our lives, we will rid you of the Germans, and make Rome and Italy! safe forever. So much I pledge you, in my own name and in the names of my legates, and in the names of every last one of my soldiers. Our duty is sacred to us. No stone will be left unturned. And before us we will carry the silver eagles of Rome's legions and be victorious!" The anonymous clusters of senators in the back of the House began to cheer and stamp their feet, and after a moment the front ranks of senators began to clap, even Scaurus. But not Metellus Numidicus. Marius waited for silence. "However, before I leave, I must beg this House to do what it can to alleviate the concern of our Italian Allies. We can give no credence to these allegations that Italian troops are being used to fight in campaigns which do not concern the Italian Allies. Nor can we cease to levy the soldiers all the Italian Allies formally agreed per treaty to give us. The Germans threaten the whole of our peninsula, and Italian Gaul as well. Yet the dreadful shortage of men suitable to serve in the legions affects the Italian Allies as much as it affects Rome. The well has run dry, my fellow senators, and the level of the table feeding it will take time to rise. I would like to give our Italian Allies my personal assurance that so long as there is breath left in this un-august and un-notable body, never again will Italian or Roman! troops waste their lives on a battlefield. Every life of every man I take with me to defend my homeland I will treat with more reverence and respect than I do my own! So do I pledge it." The cheers and the stamping of feet began again, and the front ranks were quicker to start applauding. But not Metellus Numidicus. And not Catulus Caesar. Again Marius waited for silence. "A reprehensible situation has been drawn to my attention. That we, the Senate and People of Rome, have taken into debt bondage many thousands of Italian Allied men, and sent them as our slaves throughout the lands we control around the Middle Sea. Because the majority of them have farming backgrounds, the majority of them are currently working out their debts in our grainlands of Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and Africa. That, Conscript Fathers, is an injustice! If we do not enforce slavery upon Roman debtors anymore, nor should we on our Italian Allies. No, they are not Romans. No, they never can be Romans. But they are our little brothers of the Italian Peninsula. And no Roman sends his little brother into debt bondage." He didn't give the few big grainland-owning senators time to protest; he swept on to his peroration. "Until I can give our grainland farmers their source of labor back in the form of German slaves, they must look for other labor than Italian debt slaves. For we, Conscript Fathers, must today enact a decree and the Assembly of the People must ratify that decree freeing all slaves of Italian Allied birth. We cannot do to our oldest and loyalest allies what we do not do to ourselves. These slaves must be freed! They must be brought home to Italy, and made to do what is their natural duty to Rome serve in Rome's auxiliary legions. "I am told there is no capite censi population in any Italian nation anymore, because it is enslaved. Well, my fellow senators, the Italian capite censi can be better employed than in working the grainlands. We cannot field our traditional armies anymore, for the men of property who served in them are either too old, too young or too dead! For the time being, the Head Count is our only source of military manpower. My valiant African army entirely Roman Head Count! has proved that the men of the Head Count can be turned into superb soldiers. And, just as history has demonstrated that the propertied men of the Italian nations are not one iota inferior as soldiers to the propertied men of Rome, so too will the next few years show Rome that the Head Count men of the Italian nations are not one iota inferior as soldiers to the Head Count men of Rome!" He stepped down from the curule dais and walked to the middle of the floor. "I want that decree, Conscript Fathers! Will you give it to me?" It had been supremely well done. Borne away on the force of Marius's oratory, the House stampeded to a Division, while Metellus Numidicus, Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus, Scaurus, Catulus Caesar, and others shouted vainly to be heard. "But how," asked Publius Rutilius Rufus as he and Marius strolled the few short paces to Marius's house after the Senate had been dismissed, "are you going to reconcile the grainland owners to this decree? You realize, I hope, that you're treading heavily on the toes of exactly that group of knights and businessmen you depend upon most for support. All the favors you doled out in Africa to these men will seem very hollow. Do you understand how many of the grain slaves are Italian? Sicily runs on them!" Marius shrugged. "My agents are at work already; I'll survive. Besides which, just because I've been sitting down at Cumae for the last month doesn't say I've been idle. I had a survey done, and the results are highly informative, not to mention interesting. Yes, there are many thousands of Italian Allied grain slaves. But in Sicily, for instance, the vast majority of the grain slaves are Greeks. And in Africa I've sent to King Gauda for replacement labor when the Italians are freed. Gauda is my client; he doesn't have any choice but to do as I ask. Sardinia is the most difficult, for in Sardinia almost all the grain slaves are Italian. However, the new governor our esteemed propraetor Titus Albucius can be persuaded to do his level best in my cause, I'm sure." "He's got a pretty arrogant quaestor in Pompey Cross-eyes from Picenum," said Rutilius Rufus dubiously. "Quaestors are like gnats," said Marius contemptuously, "not experienced enough to head for parts unknown when a man starts clapping round his head." "That's not a very complimentary observation to make about Lucius Cornelius!" "He's different." Rutilius Rufus sighed. "I don't know, Gaius Marius, I'm sure! I just hope it all turns out as you think it will." "Old Cynic," said Marius affectionately. "Old Skeptic, if you please!" said Rutilius Rufus.
Word came to Marius that the Germans showed no sign of moving south into the Roman province of Gaul-across-the-Alps, save for the Cimbri, who had crossed to the western bank of the Rhodanus and were keeping clear of the Roman sphere. The Teutones, said Marius's agent's report, were wandering off to the northwest, and the Tigurini-Marcomanni-Cherusci were back among the Aedui and Ambarri looking as if they never intended to move. Of course, the report admitted, the situation could change at any moment. But it took time for eight hundred thousand people to gather up their belongings, their animals, and their wagons, and start moving. Gaius Marius need not expect to see any Germans coming south down the Rhodanus before May or June. If they came at all. It didn't really please Gaius Marius, that report. His men were excited and primed for a good fight, his legates were anxious to do well, and his officers and centurions had been toiling to produce a perfect military machine. Though Marius had known since landing in Italy the previous December that there was a German interpreter saying the Germans were at loggerheads with each other, he hadn't really believed they would not resume their southward progress through the Roman province. The Germans having annihilated an enormous Roman army, it was logical, natural, and proper for them to take advantage of their victory and move into the territory they had in effect won by force of arms. Settle in it, even. Otherwise, why give battle at all? Why emigrate? Why anything? "They are a complete mystery to me!" he cried, chafing and frustrated, to Sulla and Aquillius after the report came. "They're barbarians," said Aquillius, who had earned his place as senior legate by suggesting that Marius be made consul, and now was very eager to go on proving his worth. But Sulla was unusually thoughtful. "We don't know nearly enough about them," he said. "I just remarked about that!" snapped Marius. "No, I was thinking along different lines. But" he slapped his knees "I'll go on thinking about things for a bit longer, Gaius Marius, before I speak. After all, we don't really know what we'll find when we cross the Alps." "That one thing we do have to decide," said Marius. "What?" asked Aquillius. "Crossing the Alps. Now that we've been assured the Germans are not going to prove a threat before May or June at the very earliest, I'm not in favor of crossing the Alps at all. At least, not by the usual route. We're moving out at the end of January with a massive baggage train. So we're going to be slow. The one thing I'll say for Metellus Dalmaticus as Pontifex Maximus is that he's a calendar fanatic, so the seasons and the months are in accord. Have you felt the cold this winter?" he asked Sulla. "Indeed I have, Gaius Marius." "So have I. Our blood is thin, Lucius Cornelius. All that time in Africa, where frosts are short-lived, and snow is something you see on the highest mountains. Why should it be any different for the troops? If we cross through the Mons Genava Pass in winter, it will go very hard on them.'' "After furlough in Campania, they'll need hardening," said Sulla unsympathetically. "Oh, yes! But not by losing toes from frostbite and the feeling in their fingers from chilblains. They've got winter issue but will the cantankerous cunni wear it?" "They will, if they're made." "You are determined to be difficult," said Marius. "All right then, I won't try to be reasonable I'll simply issue orders. We are not taking the legions to Gaul-across-the-Alps by the usual route. We're going to march along the coast the whole long way." "Ye gods, it'll take an eternity!" said Aquillius. "How long is it since an army traveled to Spain or Gaul along the coast?" Marius asked Aquillius. "I can't remember an occasion when an army has!" "And there you have it, you see!" said Marius triumphantly. "That's why we're going to do it. I want to see how difficult it is, how long it takes, what the roads are like, the terrain everything. I'll take four of the legions in light marching order, and you, Manius Aquillius, will take the other two legions plus the extra cohorts we've managed to scrape together, and escort the baggage train. If when they do turn south, the Germans head for Italy instead of for Spain, how do we know whether they'll go over the Mons Genava Pass into Italian Gaul, or whether they'll head as they'll see it, anyway straight for Rome along the coast? They seem to have precious little interest in discovering how our minds work, so how are they going to know that the quickest and shortest way to Rome is not along the coast, but over the Alps into Italian Gaul?" His legates stared at him. "I see what you mean," said Sulla, "but why take the whole army? You and I and a small squadron could do it better." Marius shook his head vigorously. "No! I don't want my army separated from me by several hundred miles of impassable mountains. Where I go, my whole army goes." So at the end of January Gaius Marius led his whole army north along the coastal Via Aurelia, taking notes the entire way, and sending curt letters back to the Senate demanding that repairs be made to this or that stretch of the road forthwith, bridges built or strengthened, viaducts made or refurbished. "This is Italy," said one such missive, "and all available routes to the north of the peninsula and Italian Gaul and Liguria must be kept in perfect condition; otherwise we may rue the day." At Pisae, where the river Arnus flowed into the sea, they crossed from Italy proper into Italian Gaul, which was a most peculiar area, neither officially designated a province nor governed like Italy proper. It was a kind of limbo. From Pisae all the way to Vada Sabatia the road was brand-new, though work on it was far from finished; this was Scaurus's contribution when he had been censor, the Via Aemilia Scauri. Marius wrote to Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus:
You are to be commended for your foresight, for I regard the Via Aemilia Scauri as one of the most significant additions to the defense of Rome and Italy since the opening-up of the Mons Genava Pass, and that is a very long time ago, considering that it was there for Hannibal to use. Your branch road to Dertona is vital strategically, for it represents the only way across the Ligurian Apennines from the Padus to the Tyrrhenian coast Rome's coast. The problems are enormous. I talked to your engineers, whom I found to be a most able group of men, and am happy to relay to you their request that additional funds be found to increase the work force on this piece of road. It needs some of the highest viaducts not to mention the longest I have ever seen, more indeed like aqueduct construction than road building. Luckily there are local quarry facilities to provide stone, but the pitifully small work force is retarding the pace at which I consider the work must progress. With respect, may I ask that you use your formidable clout to pry the money out of the House and Treasury to speed up this project? If it could be completed by the end of this coming summer, Rome may rest easier at the thought that a mere fifty-odd miles of road may save an army several hundreds.
"There," said Marius to Sulla, "that ought to keep the old boy busy and happy!" "It will, too," said Sulla, grinning. The Via Aemilia Scauri ended at Vada Sabatia; from that point on there was no road in the Roman sense, just a wagon trail which followed the line of least resistance through an area where very high mountains plunged into the sea. "You're going to be sorry you chose this way," said Sulla. "On the contrary, I'm glad. I can see a thousand places where ambush is possible, I can see why no one in his right mind goes to Gaul-across-the-Alps this way, I can see why our Publius Vagiennius who hails from these parts could climb a sheer wall to find his snail patch, and I can see why we need not fear that the Germans will choose this route. Oh, they might start out along the coast, but a couple of days of this and a fast horseman going ahead will see them turn back. If it's difficult for us, it's impossible for them. Good!" Marius turned to Quintus Sertorius, who, in spite of his very junior status, enjoyed a privileged position nothing save merit had earned him. "Quintus Sertorius, my lad, whereabouts do you think the baggage train might be?" he asked. "I'd say somewhere between Populonia and Pisae, given the poor condition of the Via Aurelia," Sertorius said. "How's your leg?" "Not up to that kind of riding." Sertorius seemed always to know what Marius was thinking. "Then find three men who are, and send them back with this," said Marius, drawing wax tablets toward him. '' You' re going to send the baggage train up the Via Cassia to Florentia and the Via Annia to Bononia, and then across the Mons Genava Pass," said Sulla, sighing in satisfaction. "We might need all those beams and bolts and cranes and tackle yet," said Marius. He smacked the backs of his fingers down on the wax to produce a perfect impression from his seal ring, and closed the hinged leaves of the tablet. "Here," he said to Sertorius. "And make sure it's tied and sealed again; I don't want any inquisitive noses poking inside. It's to be given to Manius Aquillius himself, understood?" Sertorius nodded and left the command tent. "As for this army, it's going to do a bit of work as it goes," Marius said to Sulla. "Send the surveyors out ahead. We'll make a reasonable track, if not a proper road." In Liguria, like other regions where the mountains were precipitous and the amount of arable land small, the inhabitants tended to a pastoral way of life, or else made a profession out of banditry and piracy, or like Publius Vagiennius took service in Rome's auxiliary legions and cavalry. Wherever Marius saw ships and a village clustered in an anchorage and deemed the ships more suited to raiding and boarding than to fishing, he burned both ships and village, left women, old men, and children behind, and took the men with him to labor improving the road. Meanwhile the reports from Arausio, Valentia, Vienne, and even Lugdunum made it increasingly clear as time went on that there would be no confrontation with the Germans this year. At the beginning of June, after four months on the march, Marius led his four legions onto the widening coastal plains of Gaul-across-the-Alps and came to a halt in the well-settled country between Arelate and Aquae Sextiae, in the vicinity of the town of Glanum, south of the Druentia River. Significantly, his baggage train had arrived before him, having spent a mere three and a half months on the road. He chose his campsite with extreme care, well clear of arable land; it was a large hill having steep and rocky slopes on three sides, several good springs on top, and a fourth side neither too steep nor too narrow to retard swift movement of troops in or out of a camp atop the hill. "This is where we are going to be living for many moons to come," he said, nodding in satisfaction. "Now we're going to turn it into Carcasso." Neither Sulla nor Manius Aquillius made any comment, but Sertorius was less self-controlled. "Do we need it?" he asked. "If you think we're going to be in the district for many moons to come, wouldn't it be a lot easier to billet the troops on Arelate or Glanum? And why stay here? Why not seek the Germans out and come to grips with them before they can get this far?" "Well, young Sertorius," said Marius, "it appears the Germans have scattered far and wide. The Cimbri, who seemed all set to follow the Rhodanus to its west, have now changed their minds and have gone to Spain, we must presume around the far side of the Cebenna, through the lands of the Arverni. The Teutones and the Tigurini have left the lands of the Aedui and gone to settle among the Belgae. At least, that's what my sources say. In reality, I imagine it's anyone's guess." "Can't we find out for certain?" asked Sertorius. "How?" asked Marius. "The Gauls have no cause to love us, and it's upon the Gauls we have to rely for our information. That they've given it to us so far is simply because they don't want the Germans in their midst either. But on one thing you can rely: when the Germans reach the Pyrenees, they'll turn back. And I very much doubt that the Belgae will want them any more than the Celtiberians of the Pyrenees. Looking at a possible target from the German point of view, I keep coming back to Italy. So here we stay until the Germans arrive, Quintus Sertorius. I don't care if it takes years." "If it takes years, Gaius Marius, our army will grow soft, and you will be ousted from the supreme command," Manius Aquillius pointed out. "Our army is not going to grow soft, because I am going to put it to work," said Marius. "We have close to forty thousand men of the Head Count. The State pays them; the State owns their arms and armor; the State feeds them. When they retire, I shall see to it that the State looks after them in their old age. But while they serve in the State's army, they are nothing more nor less than employees of the State. As consul, I represent the State. Therefore they are my employees. And they are costing me a very large amount of money. If all they are required to do in return is sit on their arses waiting to fight a battle, compute the enormity of the cost of that battle when it finally comes." The eyebrows were jiggling up and down fiercely. "They didn't sign a contract to sit on their arses waiting for a battle, they enlisted in the army of the State to do whatever the State requires of them. Since the State is paying them, they owe the State work. And that's what they're going to do. Work! This year they're going to repair the Via Domitia all the way from Nemausus to Ocelum. Next year they're going to dig a ship canal all the way from the sea to the Rhodanus at Arelate." Everyone was staring at him in fascination, but for a long moment no one could find anything to say. Then Sulla whistled. "A soldier is paid to fight!" "If he bought his gear with his own money and he expects nothing more from the State than the food he eats, then he can call his own tune. But that description doesn't fit my lot," said Gaius Marius. "When they're not called upon to fight, they'll do much-needed public works, if for no other reason than it will give them to understand that they're in service to the State in exactly the same way as a man is to any employer. And it will keep them fit!" "What about us?" asked Sulla. "Do you intend to turn us into engineers?" "Why not?" asked Marius. "I'm not an employee of the State, for one thing," said Sulla, pleasantly enough. "I give my time as a gift, like all the legates and tribunes." Marius eyed him shrewdly. "Believe me, Lucius Cornelius, it's a gift I appreciate," he said, and left it at that.
Sulla left the meeting dissatisfied nonetheless. Employees of the State, indeed! True for the Head Count, perhaps, but not for the tribunes and legates, as he had pointed out. Marius had taken the point, and backed away. But what Sulla had left unsaid was true just the same. Monetary rewards for the tribunes and legates would be shares in the booty. And no one had any real idea how much booty the Germans were likely to yield. The sale of prisoners into slavery was the general's perquisite he did not share it with his legates, his tribunes, his centurions, or his troops and somehow Sulla had a feeling that at the end of this however-many-years-long campaign, the pickings would be lean except in slaves. Sulla had not enjoyed the long, tedious journey to the Rhodanus. Quintus Sertorius had snuffled his way like a hound on a leash, tail wagging, all of himself aquiver with pleasure at the slightest whiff of any kind of job. He had taught himself to use the groma, the surveyor's instrument; he had settled down to watch how the corps of engineers dealt with rivers in spate, or fallen bridges, or landslides; he had led a century or two of soldiers to winkle out a nest of pirates from some mean cove; he had done duty with the gangs on road repairs; he had gone ranging ahead to spy out the land; he had even cured and tamed a young eagle with a broken wing, so that it still came back to visit him from time to time. Yes, everything was grist to Quintus Sertorius 's mill. If in nothing else, in that one could see that he was related to Gaius Marius. But Sulla needed drama. He had gained sufficient insight into himself to understand that now he was a senator, this represented a flaw in his character, yet at thirty-six years of age, he didn't think he was going to be able to excise a facet of himself so innate. Until that dreary interminable journey along the Via Aemilia Scauri and through the Maritime Alps, he had thoroughly enjoyed his military career, finding it full of action and challenge, be it the action and challenge of battle or of carving out a new Africa. But making roads and digging canals? That wasn't what he had come to Gaul-across-the-Alps to do! Nor would he! And in late autumn there would be a consular election, and Marius would be replaced by someone inimical, and all that he'd have to show for his much-vaunted second consulship was a magnificently upkept road already bearing someone else's name. How could the man remain so tranquil, so unworried? He hadn't even bothered to answer that half of Aquillius's statement, to the effect that he would be ousted from his command. What was the Arpinate fox up to? Why wasn't he worried? Suddenly Sulla forgot these vexed questions, for he had spied something which promised to be deliciously piquant; his eyes began to dance with interest and amusement. Outside the senior tribunes' mess tent two men were in conversation. Or at least that was what it looked like to a casual observer. To Sulla it looked like the opening scene of a wonderful farce. The taller of the two men was Gaius Julius Caesar. The shorter was Gaius Lusius, nephew (by marriage only, Marius had been quick to say) of the Great Man. I wonder, does it take one to know one? Sulla asked himself as he strolled up to them. Caesar obviously didn't know one when he saw one, and yet it was clear to Sulla that every instinct in Caesar was clanging an alarm. "Oh, Lucius Cornelius!" whinnied Gaius Lusius. "I was just asking Gaius Julius whether he knew what sort of night life there is in Arelate, and if there is any, whether he'd care to sample it with me." Caesar's long, handsome face was an expressionless mask of courtesy, but his anxiety to be away from his present company showed itself in a dozen ways, thought Sulla; the eyes that tried to remain focused on Lusius's face but drifted aside, the minimal movements his feet made inside his military boots, the little flicks his fingers were making, and more. "Perhaps Lucius Cornelius knows better than I do," said Caesar, beginning to make his bolt for freedom by shifting all his weight onto one foot, and poking the other forward a trifle. "Oh no, Gaius Julius, don't go!" Lusius protested. "The more the merrier!" And he actually giggled. "Sorry, Gaius Lusius, I have to go on duty," said Caesar, and was away. More Lusius's own height, Sulla put his hand on Lusius's elbow and drew him further away from the tent. His hand fell immediately. Gaius Lusius was very good-looking. His eyes were long-lashed and green, his hair a tumbled mass of darkish red curls, his brows finely arched and dark, his nose rather Greek in its length, high bridge, and straightness. Quite the little Lord Apollo, thought Sulla, unmoved and untempted. He doubted whether Marius had so much as set eyes on the young man; that would not have been Marius's way. Having been pressured by his family into accepting Gaius Lusius into his military family he had appointed Lusius an unelected tribune of the soldiers because his age was correct Marius would prefer to forget the young man's existence. Until such time as the young man intruded himself upon his notice, hopefully via some deed of valor or extraordinary ability. "Gaius Lusius, I'm going to offer you a word of advice," said Sulla crisply. The long-lashed eyelids fluttered, lowered. "I am grateful for any advice from you, Lucius Cornelius." "You joined us only yesterday, having made your own way from Rome," Sulla began. Lusius interrupted. "Not from Rome, Lucius Cornelius. From Ferentinum. My uncle Gaius Marius gave me special leave to remain in Ferentinum because my mother was ill." Aha! thought Sulla. That explains some of Marius's gruff offhandedness about this nephew by marriage! How he would hate to trot out that reason for the young man's tardy arrival, when he would never have used it to excuse himself! "My uncle hasn't asked to see me yet," Lusius was busy complaining now. "When may I see him?" "Not until he asks, and I doubt he'll ask at all. Until you prove your worth, you're an embarrassment to him, if for no other reason than that you claimed extra privilege before the campaign even started you came late." "But my mother was ill!" said Lusius indignantly. "We all have mothers, Gaius Lusius or we all did have mothers. Many of us have been obliged to go off to military service when our mothers were ill. Many of us have learned of a mother's death when on military service very far away from her. Many of us are deeply attached to our living mothers. But a mother's illness is not normally considered an adequate excuse for turning up late on military service. I suppose you've already told all your tentmates why you're tardy?" "Yes," said Lusius, more and more bewildered. "A pity. You'd have done better to have said nothing at all, and let your tentmates guess in the dark. They won't think the better of you for it, and your uncle knows they won't think the better of him for allowing it. But blood family is blood family, and often unfair." Sulla frowned. "However, that is not what I wanted to say to you. This is the army of Gaius Marius, not the army of Scipio Africanus. Do you know what I am referring to?' ' "No," said Lusius, completely out of his depth. "Cato the Censor accused Africanus and his senior officers of running an army riddled with moral laxity. Well, Gaius Marius is a lot closer in his thinking to Cato the Censor than he is to Scipio Africanus. Am I making myself understood?" "No," said Lusius, the color fading from his cheeks. "I think I am, really," said Sulla, smiling to show his long teeth unpleasantly. "You're attracted to handsome young men, not to pretty young women. I can't accuse you of overt effeminacy, but if you go on fluttering your eyelashes at the likes of Gaius Julius who happens to be your uncle's brother-in-law, as indeed am I you'll find yourself in boiling water up to the neck. Preferring one's own sex is not considered a Roman virtue. On the contrary, it is considered especially in the legions! an undesirable vice. If it wasn't, perhaps the women of the towns near which we camp wouldn't make so much money, nor the women of the enemies we conquer find rape their first taste of our Roman swords. But you must know some of this, at least!" Lusius writhed, torn between a feeling of inexplicable inferiority and a burning sense of injustice. "Times are changing," he protested. "It isn't the social solecism it was!" "You mistake the times, Gaius Lusius, probably because you want them to change, and have been associating with a group of your peers who feel the same way. So you gather together and you compare notes, seizing upon any remark to support your contention. I can assure you," Sulla said very seriously, "that the more you go about the world into which you were born, the more you will come to see that you are deluding yourself. And nowhere is there less forgiveness for preferring your own sex than in Gaius Marius's army. And no one will crack down on you harder than Gaius Marius if he learns of your secret." Almost weeping, Lusius wrung his hands together in futile anguish. "I'll go mad!" he cried. "No, you won't. You'll discipline yourself, you'll be extremely careful in whatever overtures you make, and as soon as you can, you'll learn the signals that operate here between men of your own persuasion," said Sulla. "I can't tell you the signals because I don't indulge in the vice myself. If you're ambitious to succeed in public life, Gaius Lusius, I strongly advise you not to indulge in the vice. But if you are young, after all you find you cannot restrain your appetites, make very sure you pick on the right man." And with a kinder smile, Sulla turned on his heel and walked away. For a while he simply strolled about aimlessly, hands behind his back, scarcely noticing the orderly activity all around him. The legions had been instructed to build a temporary camp, in spite of the fact that there wasn't an enemy force inside the province; simply, no Roman army slept unprotected. The permanent hilltop camp was already being tackled by the surveyors and engineers, and those troops not detailed to construct the temporary camp were put onto the first stages of fortifying the hill. This consisted in procuring timber for beams, posts, buildings. And the lower Rhodanus Valley possessed few forests, for it had been populous now for some centuries, ever since the Greeks founded Massilia, and Greek then Roman influence spread inland. The army lay to the north of the vast salt marshes which formed the Rhodanus delta and spread both west and east of it; it was typical of Marius that he had chosen unfilled ground whereon to build his camps, both temporary and permanent. "There's no point in antagonizing one's potential allies," he said. "Besides which, with fifty thousand extra mouths in the area to feed, they're going to need every inch of arable land they've got." Marius's grain and food procurators were already riding out to conclude contracts with farmers, and some of the troops were building granaries atop the hill to hold sufficient grain to feed fifty thousand men through the twelve months between one harvest and the next. The heavy baggage contained all manner of items Marius's sources of information had said would either be unobtainable in Gaul-across-the-Alps, or would be scarce pitch, massive beams, block-and-tackle, tools, cranes, treadmills, lime, and quantities of precious iron bolts and nails. At Populonia and Pisae, the two ports which received the rough-smelted bloom-iron "sows" from the isle of Ilva, the praefectus fabrum had purchased every sow available and carted them along too in case the engineers had to make steel; in the heavy baggage were anvils, crucibles, hammers, fire bricks, all the tools necessary. Already a group of soldiers were fetching timber to make a large cache of charcoal, for without charcoal it was impossible to get a furnace hot enough to melt iron, let alone steel it. And by the time that he turned back toward the general's command tent, he had decided that the time had come; for Sulla had an answer to boredom already thoroughly thought out, an answer which would give him all the drama he could ask for. The idea had germinated while he was still in Rome, and grown busily all the way along the coast, and now could be permitted to flower. Yes, time to see Gaius Marius. The general was alone, writing industriously. "Gaius Marius, I wonder if you have an hour to spare? I would like your company on a walk," Sulla said, holding open the flap between the tent and the hide awning under which the duty officer sat. An inquisitive beam of light had stolen in behind him, and so he stood surrounded by an aura of liquid gold, his bare head and shoulders alive with the fire of his curling hair. Looking up, Marius eyed this vision with disfavor. "You need a haircut," he said curtly. "Another couple of inches and you'll look like a dancing girl!" "How extraordinary!" said Sulla, not moving. "I'd call it slipshod," said Marius. "No, what's extraordinary is that you haven't noticed for months, and right at this moment, when it's in the forefront of my mind, you suddenly do notice. You may not be able to read minds, Gaius Marius, but I think you are attuned to the minds of those you work with." "You sound like a dancing girl as well," said Marius. "Why do you want company on a walk?" "Because I need to speak to you privately, Gaius Marius, somewhere that I can be sure neither the walls nor the windows have ears. A walk should provide us with such a place." Down went the pen, the roll of paper was furled; Marius rose at once. "I'd much rather walk than write, Lucius Cornelius, so let's go," he said. They strode briskly through the camp, not talking, and unaware of the curious glances which followed them from parties of soldiers, centurions, cadets, and more soldiers; after three years of campaigning with Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the men of these legions had developed an inbuilt sense of sureness about their commanders that told them whenever there was something important in the offing. And today was such an occasion; every man sensed it. It was too late in the day to contemplate climbing the hill, so Marius and Sulla stopped where the wind blew their words away. "Now, what's the matter?" asked Marius. "I started growing my hair long in Rome," said Sulla. “Never noticed until now. I take it the hair has something to do with what you want to talk to me about?" "I'm turning myself into a Gaul," Sulla announced. Marius looked alert. "Oho! Talk on, Lucius Cornelius." "The most frustrating aspect of this campaign against the Germans is our abysmal lack of reliable intelligence about them," Sulla said. "From the very beginning, when the Taurisci first sent us their request for aid and we discovered that the Germans were migrating, we've been handicapped by the fact that we know absolutely nothing about them. We don't know who they are, where they come from, what gods they worship, why they migrated from their homelands in the first place, what sort of social organization they enjoy, how they are led. Most important of all, we don't know why they keep defeating us and then turning away from Italy, when you wouldn't have stopped Hannibal or Pyrrhus with a barricade of a million war elephants." His eyes were looking ninety degrees away from Marius, and the last shafts of the sun shone through them from side to side, filling Marius with an uneasy awe; on rare occasions he was struck by a facet of Sulla normally hidden, the facet he thought of as Sulla's inhumanity, and he didn't use that word for any of its more accepted connotations. Simply, Sulla could suddenly drop a veil and stand revealed as no man but no god either a different invention of the gods than a man. A quality reinforced at this moment, with the sun bound up inside his eyes as if it belonged there. "Go on," said Marius. Sulla went on. "Before we left Rome, I bought myself two new slaves. They've traveled with me; they're with me now. One is a Gaul of the Carnutes, the tribe which controls the whole Celtic religion. It's a strange sort of worship they believe trees are animate, in that they have spirits, or shades, or something of the kind. Difficult to relate to our own ideas. The other man is a German of the Cimbri, captured in Noricum at the time Carbo was defeated. I keep them isolated from each other. Neither man knows of the other's existence." "Haven't you been able to find out about the Germans from your German slave?" asked Marius. "Not a thing. He pretends to have no knowledge of who they are or where they come from. My inquiries lead me to believe that this ignorance is a general characteristic in the few Germans we have managed to capture and enslave, though I very much doubt that any other Roman owner has actively tried to obtain information. That is now irrelevant. My purpose in buying my German was to obtain information, but when he proved recalcitrant and there doesn't seem to be much point in torturing someone who stands there like a gigantic ox I had a better idea. Information, Gaius Marius, is usually secondhand. And for our purposes, secondhand isn't good enough." "True," said Marius, who knew where Sulla was going now, but had no wish to hurry him. "So I began to think that if war with the Germans was not imminent, it behooved us to try to obtain information about them at first hand," said Sulla. "Both my slaves have been in service to Romans for long enough to have learned Latin, though in the case of the German, it's a very rudimentary sort of Latin. Interestingly, from my Carnutic Gaul I learned that once away from the Middle Sea and into Long-haired Gaul, the second language among the Gauls is Latin, not Greek! Oh, I don't mean to imply that the Gauls walk round exchanging Latin quips, only that thanks to contacts between the settled tribes like the Aedui and ourselves be it in the guise of soldiers or traders there is an occasional Gaul who has a smattering of Latin, and has learned to read and write. Since their own languages are not written, when they read and write, they do so in Latin. Not in Greek. Fascinating, isn't it? We're so used to thinking of Greek as the lingua franca of the world that it's quite exhilarating to find one part of the world preferring Latin!" "Not being either scholar or philosopher, Lucius Cornelius, I must confess to some lack of excitement. However," said Marius, smiling faintly, "I am extremely interested in finding out about the Germans!" Sulla lifted his hands in mock surrender. "Point taken, Gaius Marius! Very well, then. For nearly five months I have been learning the language of the Carnutes of central Long-haired Gaul, and the language of the Cimbric Germans. My tutor in Carnute is far more enthusiastic about the project than my tutor in German but then, he's also a brighter specimen." Sulla stopped to consider that statement, and found himself dissatisfied with it. "My impression that the German is duller may not necessarily be correct. He may be since the shock of separation from his own kind is far greater than for the Gaul merely living at a mental remoteness from his present plight. Or, given the luck of the grab bag and the fact that he was foolish enough to let himself be captured in a war his people won, he may just be a dull German." "Lucius Cornelius, my patience is not inexhaustible," said Marius, not snappishly, more in tones of resignation. "You are showing all the signs of a particularly peripatetic Peripatetic!'' "My apologies," Sulla said with a grin, and turned now to look at Marius directly. The light died out of his eyes, and he seemed once again quite human. "With my hair and skin and eyes," Sulla said crisply, "I can pass very easily for a Gaul. I intend to become a Gaul, and travel into areas where no Roman would dare go. Particularly, I intend to shadow the Germans on their way to Spain, which I gather means the people of the Cimbri for certain, and perhaps the other peoples. I now know enough Cimbric German to at least understand what they say, which is why I will concentrate upon the Cimbri." He laughed. "My hair actually ought to be considerably longer than a dancing girl's, but it will have to do for the moment. If I'm quizzed about its shortness, I shall say I had a disease of the scalp, and had to shave it all off. Luckily it grows very fast." He fell silent. For some moments Marius didn't speak, just put his foot up on a handy log and his elbow on his knee and his chin on his fist. The truth was that he couldn't think of what to say. Here for months he had been worrying that he was going to lose Lucius Cornelius to the fleshpots of Rome because the campaign was going to be too boring, and all the time Lucius Cornelius was fastidiously working out a plan sure not to be boring. What a plan! What a man! Ulysses had been the first recorded spy, donning the guise of some Trojan nobody and sneaking inside the walls of Ilium to pick up every scrap of information he could and one of the favorite debates a boy's grammaticus concocted was whether or not Calchas had defected to the Achaeans because he was genuinely fed up with the Trojans, or because he wanted to spy for King Priam, or because he wanted to sow discord among the kings of Greece. Ulysses had had red hair too. Ulysses had been highborn too. And yet Marius found it impossible to think of Sulla as some latter-day Ulysses. He was his own man, complete and rounded. Just as was his plan. There was no fear in him, so much was plain; he was approaching this extraordinary mission in a businesslike and and invulnerable way. In other words, he was approaching it like the Roman aristocrat he was. He harbored no doubts that he would succeed, because he knew he was better than other men. Down came the fist, the elbow, the foot. Marius drew a breath, and asked, "Do you honestly think you can do it, Lucius Cornelius? You're such a Roman! I'm consumed with admiration for you, and it's a brilliant, brilliant plan. But it will call for you to shed every last trace of the Roman, and I'm not sure any Roman can do that. Our culture is so enormously strong, it leaves ineradicable marks on us. You'll have to live a lie." One red-gold brow lifted; the corners of the beautiful mouth went down. "Oh, Gaius Marius, I have lived one kind of lie or another all my life!" "Even now?" "Even now." They turned to commence walking back. "Do you intend to go on your own, Lucius Cornelius?" Marius asked. "Don't you think it might be a good idea to have company? What if you need to send a message back to me urgently, but find you cannot leave yourself? And mightn't it be a help to have a comrade to serve as your mirror, and you as his?" "I've thought of all that," said Sulla, "and I would like to take Quintus Sertorius with me." At first Marius looked delighted, then a frown gathered. "He's too dark. He'd never pass for a Gaul, let alone a German." "True. However, he could be a Greek with Celtiberian blood in him." Sulla cleared his throat. "I gave him a slave when we left Rome, as a matter of fact. A Celtiberian of the tribe Illergetes. I didn't tell Quintus Sertorius what was in the wind, but I did tell him to learn to speak Celtiberian." Marius stared. "You're well prepared. I approve." "So I may have Quintus Sertorius?" “Oh, yes. Though I still think he's too dark, and I wonder if that fact mightn't undo you." "No, it will be all right. Quintus Sertorius is extremely valuable to me, and his darkness will, I fancy, turn out to be an asset. You see, Quintus Sertorius has animal magic, and men with animal magic are held in great awe by all barbarian peoples. His darkness will contribute to his shaman-power." "Animal magic? What exactly do you mean?" "Quintus Sertorius can summon wild creatures to him. I noticed it in Africa, when he actually whistled up a pard-cat and fondled it. But I only began to work out a role for him on this mission when he made a pet out of the eagle chick he cured, yet didn't kill its natural wish to be free and wild. So now it lives as it was meant to, yet it still remains his friend, and comes to visit him, and sits on his arm and kisses him. The soldiers reverence him. It is a great omen." "I know," said Marius. "The eagle is the symbol of the legions, and Quintus Sertorius has reinforced it." They stood looking at the place where six silver eagles upon silver poles ornamented with crowns and phalerae medals and torcs were driven into the ground; a fire in a tripod burned before them, sentries stood to attention, and a togate priest with folds pulled up to cover his head threw incense on the coals in the tripod as he said the sundown prayers. "What exactly is the importance of this animal magic?" Marius asked. "The Gauls are highly superstitious about the spirits which dwell in all wild things, and so I gather are the Cimbric Germans. Quintus Sertorius will masquerade as a shaman from a Spanish tribe so remote even the tribes of the Pyrenees will not know much about him," said Sulla. "When do you intend to set out?" "Very soon now. But I'd prefer it if you told Quintus Sertorius," said Sulla. "He'll want to come, but his loyalty to you is complete. So it's better that you tell him." He blew through his nostrils. "No one is to know. No one!" "I couldn't agree more," said Marius. "However, there are three slaves who know a little something, since they've been giving you language lessons. Do you want them sold and shipped overseas somewhere?" "Why go to so much trouble?" asked Sulla, surprised. "I intended to kill them." "An excellent idea. But you'll lose money on the deal." "Not a fortune. Call it my contribution to the success of the campaign against the Germans," said Sulla easily. "I'll have them killed the moment you're gone." But Sulla shook his head. "No, I'll do my own dirty work. And now. They've taught me and Quintus Sertorius as much as they know. Tomorrow I'll send them off to Massilia to do a job for me." He stretched, yawned voluptuously. "I'm good with a bow and arrow, Gaius Marius. And the salt marshes are very desolate. Everyone will simply assume they've run away. Including Quintus Sertorius." I'm too close to the earth, thought Marius. It isn't that I mind sending men to extinction, even in cold blood. To do so is a part of life as we know it, and vexes no god. But he is one of the old patrician Romans, all right. Too far above the earth. Truly a demigod. And Marius found himself turning in his mind to the words of the Syrian prophetess Martha, now luxuriating as an honored guest in his house in Rome. A far greater Roman than he, a Gaius too, but a Julius, not a Marius .. . Was that what it needed? That semi-divine drop of patrician blood?
2
Said Publius Rutilius Rufus in a letter to Gaius Marius dated the end of September:
Well, Publius Licinius Nerva has nerved himself at last to write to the Senate with complete candor about the situation in Sicily. As senior consul, you are being sent the official dispatches, of course, but you will hear my version first, for I know you'll choose to read my letter ahead of boring old dispatches, and I've cadged a place for my letter in the official courier's bag. But before I tell you about Sicily, it is necessary to go back to the beginning of the year, when as you know the House recommended to the People in their tribes that a law should be passed freeing all slaves of Italian Allied nationality throughout our world. But you will not know that it had one unforeseen repercussion namely, that the slaves of other nationalities, particularly those nations officially designated as Friends and Allies of the Roman People, either assumed that the law referred to them as well, or else were mighty displeased that it did not. This is particularly true of Greek slaves, who form the majority of Sicily's grain slaves, and also form the majority of slaves of all kinds in Campania. In February, the son of a Campanian knight and full Roman citizen named Titus Vettius, aged all of twenty years old, apparently went mad. The cause of his madness was debt; he had committed himself to pay seven silver talents for of all things! a Scythian slave girl. But the elder Titus Vettius being a tightwad of the first order, and too old to be the father of a twenty-year-old besides, young Titus Vettius borrowed the money at exorbitant interest, pledging his entire inheritance as collateral. Of course he was as helpless as a plucked chicken in the hands of the moneylenders, who insisted he pay them at the end of thirty days. Naturally he could not, and he did obtain an extension of a further thirty days. But when again he had no hope of paying them, the moneylenders went to his father and demanded their loan with exorbitant interest. The father refused, and disowned his son. Who went mad. The next thing, young Titus Vettius had put on a diadem and a purple robe, declared himself the King of Campania, and roused every slave in the district to rebellion. The father, I hasten to add, is one of the good old-fashioned bulk farmers treats his slaves well, and has no Italians among them. But just down the road was one of the new bulk farmers, those dreadful men who buy slaves dirt-cheap, chain them up to work, don't ask questions about their origins, and lock them in ergastulum barracks to sleep. This despicable fellow's name was Marcus Macrinus Mactator, and he turns out to have been a great friend of your junior colleague in the consulship, our wonderfully upright and honest Gaius Flavius Fimbria. The day young Titus Vettius went mad, he armed his slaves by buying up five hundred sets of old show-arms a gladiatorial school was auctioning off, and down the road the little army marched to the well of servile pain run by Marcus Macrinus Mactator. And proceeded to torture and kill Mactator and his family, and free a very large number of slaves, many of whom turned out to be of Italian Allied nationality, and therefore were illegally detained. Within no time at all, young Titus Vettius the King of Campania had an army of slaves over four thousand strong, and had barricaded himself into a very well fortified camp atop a hill. And the servile recruits kept pouring in! Capua barred its gates, brought all the gladiatorial schools into line, and appealed to the Senate in Rome for help. Fimbria was very vocal about the affair, and mourned the loss of his friend Mactator Slaughterman until the Conscript Fathers were fed up enough to depute the praetor peregrinus, Lucius Licinius Lucullus, to assemble an army and quash the servile uprising. Well, you know what a colossal aristocrat Lucius Licinius Lucullus is! He didn't take at all kindly to being ordered by a cockroach like Fimbria to clean up Campania. And now a mild digression. I suppose you know that Lucullus is married to Metellus Piggle-wiggle's sister, Metella Calva. They have a pair of sons about fourteen and twelve years of age who are commonly rumored to be extremely promising, and now that Piggle-wiggle's son, the Piglet, can't manage to get two words out straight, the whole family is rather pinning its hopes on young Lucius and young Marcus Lucullus. Now stop it, Gaius Marius! I can hear you ho-humming from Rome! All this is important stuff, if only you could be brought to believe it. How can you possibly conduct yourself unscathed through the labyrinth of Roman public life if you won't bother to learn all the family ramifications and gossip? Lucullus's wife who is Piggle-wiggle's sister is notorious for her immorality. First of all, she conducts her affairs of the heart in blazingly public fashion, complete with hysterical scenes in front of popular jeweler's shops, and the occasional attempted suicide by stripping off all her clothes and trying to hop over the wall into the Tiber. But secondly, poor Metella Calva does not philander with men of her own class, and that's what really hurts our lofty Piggle-wiggle. Not to mention the haughty Lucullus. No, Metella Calva likes handsome slaves, or hulking laborers she picks up on the wharves of the Port of Rome. She is therefore a dreadful burden to Piggle-wiggle and Lucullus, though I believe she is an excellent mother to her boys. End of digression. I mention it to sprinkle this whole episode with a little much-needed spice. And to make you understand why Lucullus went off to Campania smarting at having to take orders from precisely the sort of man Metella Calva might well have fancied were he poorer rougher he could not be! There is something very fishy going on with Fimbria, incidentally. He has struck up a friendship with Gaius Memmius, of all people, and the two of them are as thick as thieves, and a lot of money is changing hands, though for what purpose is unclear. Anyway, Lucullus soon cleaned up Campania. Young Titus Vettius was executed, as were his officers and the members of his slave army. Lucullus was commended for his work, and went back to hearing the assizes in places like Reate. But didn't I tell you some time ago that I had a feeling about those tiny little servile uprisings in Campania last year? My nose was right. First we had Titus Vettius. And now we have a full-scale slave war on our hands in Sicily! I have always thought Publius Licinius Nerva looked and acted like a mouse, but who could ever have dreamed that it would be dangerous to send him as praetor-governor to Sicily? He's so squeaky-meticulous the job should have suited him down to the ground. Scurrying here, scurrying there, laying in his stores for winter, writing copiously detailed accounts with the tip of his tail dipped in ink, whiskers twitching. Of course all would have gone well, had it not been for this wretched law about freeing the Italian Allied slaves. Our praetor-governor Nerva scurried off to Sicily and began to manumit the Italians, who number about a quarter of the total grain slaves. And he got started in Syracuse, while his quaestor got started at the other end of the island, in Lilybaeum. It went slowly and precisely, Nerva being Nerva he did, by the way, evolve an excellent system to catch out slaves claiming to be Italian who were not Italian, by quizzing them in Oscan and local geography of our peninsula. But he published his decree in Latin only, thinking this too would weed out potential imposters. With the result that those reading Greek had to rely upon others to translate, and the confusion grew, and grew, and grew.... The two weeks at the end of May saw Nerva free some eight hundred Italian slaves in Syracuse, while his quaestor in Lilybaeum marked time, waiting for orders. And there arrived in Syracuse a very angry deputation of grain farmers, all the members of which threatened to do things to Nerva if he went on freeing their slaves that ranged from emasculation to litigation. Nerva panicked at sight of this spitting cat, and shut down his tribunal at once. No more slaves were to be freed. This directive reached his quaestor in Lilybaeum a little too late, unfortunately, for his quaestor had grown tired of waiting, and set up his tribunal in the marketplace. Now, having barely got started, he too shut down. The slaves lined up in the marketplace were quite literally mad with rage, and went home to do murder. The result was an outright revolt at the western end of the island. It started with the murder of a couple of wealthy brothers who farmed a huge grain property near Halicyae, and it went on from there. All over Sicily slaves in hundreds and then thousands left their farms, some of them only after murdering their overseers and even their owners, and converged on the Grove of the Palici, which lies, I believe, some forty miles southwest of Mount Aetna. Nerva called up his militia, and thought he had crushed the revolt when he stormed and took an old citadel filled with refugee slaves. So he disbanded his militia, and sent them all to their various homes. But the revolt was only just beginning. It flared up next time near Heracleia Minoa, and when Nerva tried to get his militia together again, everyone became extremely deaf. He was forced to fall back on a cohort of auxiliaries stationed at Enna, quite a distance from Heracleia Minoa, but the closest force of any size nonetheless. This time Nerva didn't win. The whole cohort perished, and the slaves acquired arms. While this was going on, the slaves produced a leader, predictably an Italian who had not been freed before Nerva closed down his tribunals. His name is Salvius, and he's a member of the Marsi. His profession when a free man, it seems, was a snake-charming flute player, and he was enslaved because he was caught playing the flute for women involved in the Dionysiac rites which so worried the Senate a few years ago. Salvius now calls himself a king, but being an Italian, his idea of a king is Roman, not Hellenic. He wears the toga praetexta rather than a diadem, and is preceded by lictors bearing the fasces, complete with axes. At the far end of Sicily, somewhere around Lilybaeum, a second slave-king then appeared, a Greek this time, named Athenion, and he too raised an army. Both Salvius and Athenion converged on the Grove of the Palici, and there had a conference. The result of this is that Salvius (who now calls himself King Tryphon) has become the ruler of the whole lot, and has chosen for his headquarters an impregnable place called Triocala, in the lap of the mountains above the coast opposite Africa, about halfway between Agrigentum and Lilybaeum. Right at this moment, Sicily is a very Iliad of woes. The harvest is lying trampled into the ground aside from what the slaves harvested to fill their own bellies, and Rome will get no grain from Sicily this year. The cities of Sicily are groaning at the seams to contain the enormous numbers of free refugees who have sought shelter within the safety of walls, and starvation and disease are already stalking the streets. An army of over sixty thousand well-armed slaves and five thousand slave cavalry is running wild anywhere it likes from one end of the island to the other, and when threatened, retires to this impregnable fortress of Triocala. They have attacked and taken Murgantia, and all but succeeded in taking Lilybaeum, which fortunately was saved by some veterans who heard about the trouble and sailed across from Africa to help. And here comes the ultimate indignity. Not only is Rome looking at a drastic grain shortage, but it very much seems that someone attempted to manipulate events in Sicily to manufacture a grain shortage! The slave uprising has turned what would have been a spurious shortage into a real one, but our esteemed Princeps Senatus, Scaurus, is nose-down on a trail leading, he hopes, to the culprit or culprits. I suspect he suspects our despicable consul Fimbria and Gaius Memmius. Why would a decent and upright man like Memmius ally himself with the likes of Fimbria? Well, yes, I can answer that one, I think. He should have been praetor years ago but has only just got there now, and he doesn't have the kind of money to run for consul. And when lack of money keeps a man out of the chair he thinks he's entitled to sit in, he can do many imprudent things.
Gaius Marius laid the letter down with a sigh, pulled the official dispatches from the Senate toward him, and read those too, comfortably alone, and therefore able to labor aloud over the hopeless fusion of words at the top of his lungs if he so wished. Not that there was any disgrace in it, everyone read aloud; but everyone else was assumed to know Greek. Publius Rutilius was right, as always. His own extremely long letter was infinitely more informative than the dispatches, though they contained the text of Nerva's letter, and were full of statistics. They just weren't as compelling nor as newsy. Nor could they put a man right in the middle of the picture the way Rutilius did. He had no trouble in imagining the consternation in Rome. A drastic grain shortage meant political futures at stake, and a growling Treasury, and aediles scrambling to find alternative sources of grain. Sicily was the breadbasket, and when Sicily didn't deliver a good harvest, Rome stared famine in the face. Neither Africa nor Sardinia sent half as much grain to Rome as Sicily did. Combined they didn't! This present crisis would see the People blaming the Senate for sending an inadequate governor to Sicily, and the Head Count would blame both the People and the Senate for their empty bellies. The Head Count was not a political body; it was not interested in governing any more than it was interested in being governed. The sum total of its participation in public life was seats at the games and free handouts at the festivals. Until its belly was empty. And then the Head Count was a force to be reckoned with. Not that the Head Count got its grain free; but the Senate through its aediles and quaestors made sure the Head Count was sold grain at a reasonable price, even if in times of shortage that meant buying expensive grain and letting it go at the same reasonable price, much to the chagrin of the Treasury. Any Roman citizen resident within Rome could avail himself of the State's price-frozen grain ration, no matter how rich he was, provided he was willing to join the huge line at the aedile's desk in the Porticus Minucia and obtain his chits; these, when presented at one of the State granaries lining the Aventine cliffs above the Port of Rome, would permit him to buy his five modii of cheap grain. That few of means bothered was purely convenience; it was so much easier to shop in the grain market of the Velabrum and leave it to the merchants to fetch the grain from the privately owned granaries lining the bottom of the Palatine cliffs on the Vicus Tuscus. Knowing himself caught in what could be a precarious political position, Gaius Marius frowned his wonderful eyebrows together. The moment the Senate asked the Treasury to open its cobwebbed vaults to buy in expensive grain for the Head Count, the howling would begin; the chiefs of the tribuni aerarii the Treasury bureaucrats would start expostulating that they couldn't possibly afford to pay out huge sums for grain when a Head Count army six legions strong was currently employed in Gaul-across-the-Alps doing public works! That in turn would shift the onus onto the Senate, which would have to do hideous battle with the Treasury to get the extra grain; and then the Senate would complain to the People that, as usual, the Head Count were a mighty costly nuisance. Wonderful! How was he going to get himself elected consul in absentia for a second year in a row, when he led a Head Count army, and Rome was at the mercy of a hungry Head Count? May Publius Licinius Nerva rot! And every grain speculator along with him!
* * *
Only Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus had sensed something wrong ahead of the crisis; with a fresh harvest due, the grain price within Rome normally fell a little at the end of summer. Whereas this year it had steadily risen. The reason seemed apparent; the freeing of the Italian grain slaves would limit the amount of planted grain being harvested. But then the grain slaves had not been freed, and the harvest was predicted normal. At which point, the price should have fallen dramatically. But it didn't. It kept on rising. To Scaurus, the evidence pointed conclusively to a grain manipulation stemming from the Senate, and his own observations pointed to the consul Fimbria and the urban praetor Gaius Memmius, who had been desperately raising money throughout the spring and summer. To buy grain cheaply and sell it at an enormous profit, Scaurus concluded. And then came the news of the slave uprising in Sicily. Whereupon Fimbria and Memmius began frantically selling everything they owned aside from their houses on the Palatine and sufficient land to ensure that they remained on the senatorial census. Therefore, Scaurus deduced, whatever the nature of their business venture might have been, it could not have had anything to do with the grain supply. His reasoning was specious, but pardonably so; had the consul and the urban praetor been involved in the escalation of the grain price, they would now be sitting back picking their teeth contentedly rather than chasing their tails to find the cash to pay back loans. No, not Fimbria and Memmius! He must look elsewhere. After Publius Licinius Nerva's letter confessing the extent of the crisis in Sicily reached Rome, Scaurus began to hear one senatorial name bruited about among the grain merchants; his sensitive proboscis smelled fresher and gamier game than the false scent of Fimbria and Memmius. Lucius Appuleius Saturninus. The quaestor for the port of Ostia. Young and new to the Senate, but holding the most sensitive position a new young senator could, if he was interested in grain prices. For the quaestor at Ostia supervised grain shipment and storage, knew and conversed with everybody involved with the whole gamut of the grain supply, was privy to all kinds of information well ahead of the rest of the Senate. Further investigations convinced Scaurus that he had found his culprit, and he struck his blow for the good name of the Senate at a meeting of that body early in October. Lucius Appuleius Saturninus was the prime mover behind the premature rise in the price of grain which had prevented the Treasury's acquiring additional stocks for the State granaries at anything like a reasonable price, said Scaurus Princeps Senatus to a hushed House. And the House had found its scapegoat; amid great indignation, the senators voted overwhelmingly to dismiss Lucius Appuleius Saturninus from his post as quaestor, thereby depriving him of his seat in the House, and leaving him open to massive prosecutions for extortion. Summoned from Ostia to appear in the House, Saturninus could do little more than deny Scaurus's charges. Of actual proof there was none either for or against and that meant the issue boiled down to which one of the men involved was more worthy of being believed. "Give me proof I am implicated!" cried Saturninus. "Give me proof you are not implicated!" sneered Scaurus. And naturally the House believed its Princeps Senatus, for Scaurus on the trail of wrongdoing was above reproach, everyone knew it. Saturninus was stripped of everything. But he was a fighter, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus. In age he was exactly right for the job of quaestor and a new senatorial seat, being thirty; which in turn meant that no one really knew much about him, since he had not starred in a great courtroom drama as a youth, and had not shone out luminously during his military apprenticeship, and came from a senatorial family originating in Picenum. Little choice did he have about losing his post as quaestor, or his seat in the Senate; he could not even protest when the House turned around and gave his beloved job in Ostia to none other than Scaurus Princeps Senatus for the rest of the year! But he was a fighter. No one in Rome believed him innocent. Wherever he went he was spat upon, jostled, even stoned, and the outside wall of his house was smothered in graffiti PIG, PEDERAST, ULCER, WOLFSHEAD, MONSTER, PENIS GOBBLER, and other slurs jostled each other for prominence on the plastered surface. His wife and his young daughter were ostracized, and spent most of their days in tears. Even his servants looked askance at him, and were slow to respond whenever he made a request, or temper tried barked an order. His best friend was a relative nobody, Gaius Servilius Glaucia. Some years older than Saturninus, Glaucia enjoyed mild fame as an advocate in the courts and a brilliant legal draftsman; but he did not enjoy the distinction of being a patrician Servilius, nor even an important plebeian Servilius. Save for his reputation as a lawyer, Glaucia was about on a par with another Gaius Servilius who had made money and scrambled into the Senate on the edge of his patron Ahenobarbus's toga; this other plebeian Servilius, however, had not yet acquired a cognomen, where "Glaucia" was quite a respectable one, for it referred to the family's beautiful grey-green eyes. They were a good-looking pair, Saturninus and Glaucia, the one very dark indeed, the other very fair, each in the best physical mould of his type. The basis for their friendship was an equal sharpness of mind and depth of intellect, as well as the avowed purpose of reaching the consulship and ennobling their families forever. Politics and lawmaking fascinated them, which meant they were eminently suited to the kind of work their birth made mandatory. "I'm not beaten yet," said Saturninus to Glaucia, mouth set hard. "There's another way back into the Senate, and I am going to use it." "Not the censors," said Glaucia. "Definitely not the censors! No, I shall stand for election as a tribune of the plebs," said Saturninus. "You'll never get in." Glaucia was not being unduly gloomy, just realistic. "I will if I can find myself a powerful enough ally." "Gaius Marius." "Who else? He's got no love for Scaurus or Numidicus or any of the Policy Makers," Saturninus said. "I'm sailing for Massilia in the morning to explain my case to the only man who might be prepared to listen to me, and to offer him my services." Glaucia nodded. "Yes, it's a good tactic, Lucius Appuleius. After all, you have nothing to lose." A thought occurring to him, he grinned. "Think of the fun you can have making old Scaurus's life a misery when you're a tribune of the plebs!'' "No, he's not the one I want!" said Saturninus scornfully. "He acted as he saw fit; I can't quarrel with that. Someone deliberately set me up as a decoy, and that's the someone I want. And if I'm a tribune of the plebs, I can make his life a misery. That is, if I can find out who it was." "You go to Massilia and see Gaius Marius," said Glaucia. "In the meantime, I'll start work on the grain culprit." In the autumn it was possible to sail to the west, and Lucius Appuleius Saturninus had a good passage to Massilia. From there he journeyed on horseback to the Roman camp outside Glanum, and sought an audience with Gaius Marius. It had not been a gross exaggeration on Marius's part to tell his senior staff that he planned to build another Carcasso, though this was a wood-and-earth version of Carcasso's stone. The hill upon which the vast Roman camp stood bristled with fortifications; Saturninus appreciated at once that a people like the Germans, unskilled in siege, would never be able to take it, even if they stormed it with every man they had at their disposal. " But," said Gaius Marius as he took his unexpected guest upon a tour of the dispositions, "it isn't really here to protect my army, you know. It's here to delude the Germans into thinking it is." This man isn't supposed to be subtle! thought Saturninus, suddenly appreciating the quality of Gaius Marius's intellect. If anyone can help me, he can. They had taken a spontaneous liking to each other, sensing a kindred ruthlessness and determination, and perhaps a certain un-Roman iconoclasm. Saturninus was profoundly glad to discover that as he had hoped he had beaten the news of his disgrace from Rome to Glanum. However, it was difficult to tell how long he might have to wait to unfold his tale of disaster, for Gaius Marius was the commander-in-chief of a mighty enterprise, and his life, including his debatable leisure, was not his own for many moments at a stretch. Expecting a crowded dining room, Saturninus was surprised to discover that he and Manius Aquillius were the only two who would share Gaius Marius's meal. "Is Lucius Cornelius in Rome?" he asked. Unperturbed, Marius helped himself to a stuffed egg. "No, he's off on a special job," he said briefly. Understanding that there was no point in concealing his plight from Manius Aquillius, who had conclusively proven himself Marius's man the previous year and who would be bound to get letters from Rome with all the tittle-tattle in them Saturninus embarked upon his story as soon as the meal was over. The two men listened in silence until it was done, not interrupting with even a single question, which made Saturninus feel that he must have outlined events with clarity and logic. Then Marius sighed. "I'm very glad you came in person to see me," he said. "It lends considerable strength to your case, Lucius Appuleius. A guilty man might have resorted to many ploys, but not that of coming to see me in person. I am not deemed a gullible man. Nor is Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, for that matter. But, like you, I think whoever had investigated this tortuous situation would have been led by a series of illusions to you. After all, as quaestor at Ostia, you're a perfect decoy." "If the case against me falls down anywhere, Gaius Marius, it is in the fact that I don't have the kind of money to buy grain in bulk," Saturninus said. "True, but it doesn't automatically exonerate you, either," Marius said. "You could as easily have done it for a very big bribe, or taken out a loan." "Do you think I did?" "No. I think you're the victim, not the perpetrator." "So do I," said Manius Aquillius. "It's too simple." "Then will you help me secure election as a tribune of the plebs?" asked Saturninus. "Oh, certainly," said Marius without hesitation. "I shall reciprocate in whatever way I can." "Good!" said Marius. After which things happened in a hurry. Saturninus had no time to waste, as the tribunician elections were scheduled for early November, and he had to get back to Rome in time to have himself declared a candidate and line up the support Marius had promised him. So, armed with a bulky packet of letters from Marius to various people in Rome, Saturninus set off toward the Alps in a fast gig drawn by four mules, and with a purse large enough to make sure he could hire animals along the way as good as the four which started him on his journey. As he was leaving, an extraordinary trio came in on foot through the camp's main gates. Three Gauls. Barbarian Gauls! Never having set eyes upon a barbarian in his life, Saturninus gaped. One was apparently the prisoner of the other two, for he was manacled. Oddly enough, he was less barbaric in his garb and appearance than the other two! A medium-sized fellow, fairish but not spectacularly so, his hair worn long but cut like a Greek, clean-shaven, clad in the trousers of a Gaul and in a Gallic coat of hairy wool bearing a faint and complicated check in its weave. The second fellow was very dark, but he wore a towering headdress of black feathers and golden wire which proclaimed him some Celtiberian outlander and little else by way of clothing, displaying instead a body bulging with muscles. The third man was obviously the leader, a true barbarian Gaul, the bare skin of his chest white as milk yet weathered, his trousers bound with thongs like a German or one of the mythical Belgae; long red-gold hair hung down his back, long red-gold moustaches fell one on either side of his mouth, and around his neck he wore a massive dragon-headed tore of what looked like real gold. The gig started to move; as he swept by the little group at even closer quarters, Saturninus encountered the cold white gaze of the leader, and shivered in spite of himself. Now he was a complete barbarian!
The three Gauls continued on up the slope inside the camp's main gates, challenged by no one until they reached the duty officer's table under the shelter of the awning outside the general's substantial timber house. "Gaius Marius, please," said the leader in flawless Latin. The duty officer didn't even blink. "I'll see if he's receiving," he said, getting up. Within a moment he was out again. "The general says to go in, Lucius Cornelius." he said, smiling widely. "Smart," said Sertorius under his breath as he brushed past the duty officer with waggling headdress. "Just keep your mouth shut about this, hear me?" When he set eyes upon his two lieutenants, Marius stared as intently at them as had Saturninus, but with less amazement. "About time you came home," he said to Sulla, grasping his hand warmly, then reaching to greet Sertorius. "We're not here for very long," said Sulla, jerking his captive forward. "All we came back to do was deliver you a gift for your triumphal parade. Meet King Copillus of the Volcae Tectosages, the same who connived at the annihilation of Lucius Cassius's army at Burdigala." "Ah!" Marius looked the prisoner over. "Doesn't look much like a Gaul, does he? You and Quintus Sertorius look far more impressive." Sertorius grinned; Sulla answered. "Well, with his capital at Tolosa, he's been exposed to civilization for a long time. He speaks Greek well, and he's probably only about half Gallic in his thinking. We caught him outside Burdigala." "Is he really worth so much trouble?" Marius asked. "You'll think so when I tell you," said Sulla, smiling in his most tigerish fashion. "You see, he has a curious tale to tell and he can tell it in a tongue Rome understands." Arrested by the look on Sulla's face, Marius stared at King Copillus more closely. "What tale?" "Oh, about ponds once full of gold. Gold that was loaded into Roman wagons and sent down the road from Tolosa to Narbo during the time when a certain Quintus Servilius Caepio was proconsul. Gold that mysteriously disappeared not far from Carcasso, leaving a cohort of Roman soldiers dead along the road, with their arms and armor stripped from them. Copillus was near Carcasso when that gold disappeared after all, the gold was rightfully in his charge, according to his way of thinking. But the party of men who took the gold south into Spain was far too large and well armed to attack, for Copillus had only a few men with him. The interesting thing is that there was a Roman survivor Furius, the praefectus fabrum. And a Greek freedman survivor Quintus Servilius Bias. But Copillus wasn't near Malaca several months later as the wagons full of gold rolled into a fish factory owned by one of Quintus Servilius Caepio's clients, nor was he near Malaca when the gold sailed away to Smyrna labeled 'Garum of Malaca, on Consignment for Quintus Servilius Caepio.' But Copillus has a friend who has a friend who has a friend who well knows a Turdetanian bandit named Brigantius, and according to this Brigantius, he was hired to steal the gold and get it to Malaca. By the agents of none other than Quintus Servilius Caepio, namely Furius and the freedman Bias, who paid Brigantius with the wagons, the mules and six hundred sets of good Roman arms and armor, taken from the men Brigantius killed. When the gold went east, Furius and Bias went with it." Never before, thought Sulla, have I seen Gaius Marius looking utterly stunned, even when he read the letter that said he was elected consul in absentia that just winded him, whereas this tries his credulity. "Ye gods!" Marius whispered. "He wouldn't dare!" "He dared, all right," said Sulla contemptuously. "What matter that the price was six hundred good Roman soldier lives? After all, there were fifteen thousand talents of gold in those wagons! It turns out that the Volcae Tectosages do not regard themselves as the owners of the gold, only as its guardians. The wealth of Delphi, Olympia, Dodona, and a dozen other smaller sanctuaries, which the second Brennus took as the property of all the Gallic tribes. So now the Volcae Tectosages are accursed, and King Copillus doubly accursed. The wealth of Gaul is gone." His shock evaporating, Marius now looked more at Sulla than at Copillus. It was a little story told in richly ringing tones, yes, but more than that; it was a little story told by a Gallic bard, not by a Roman senator. "You are a great actor, Lucius Cornelius," he said. Sulla looked absurdly pleased. "My thanks, Gaius Marius." "But you're not staying? What about the winter? You'd be more comfortable here." Marius grinned. "Especially young Quintus Sertorius, if he's got no more in his clothes chest than a feathered crown." "No, we're off again tomorrow. The Cimbri are milling around the foothills of the Pyrenees, with the local tribesmen throwing every last thing they can find to throw down on them from every ledge, crag, rock, and cliff. The Germans seem to have a fascination for alps! But it's taken Quintus Sertorius and me all these months to get close to the Cimbri we've had to establish our identities with half of Gaul and Spain, it seems," said Sulla. Marius poured out two cups of wine, looked at Copillus, and poured a third, which he handed to the prisoner. As he gave Sertorius his drink, he eyed his Sabine relative up and down gravely. "You look like Pluto's rooster," he said. Sertorius took a sip of the wine and sighed blissfully. "Tusculan!" he said, then preened. "Pluto's rooster, eh? Well, better that than Proserpina's crow." "What news do you have of the Germans?" Marius asked. "In brief I'll tell you more over dinner very little. It's too early yet to be able to give you information about where they come from, or what drives them. Next time. I'll get back well ahead of any move they might make in the direction of Italy, never fear. But I can tell you where they all are at this very moment. The Teutones and the Tigurini, Marcomanni, and Cherusci are trying to cross the Rhenus into Germania, while the Cimbri are trying to cross the Pyrenees into Spain. I don't think either group will succeed," said Sulla, putting down his cup. "Oh, that wine was good!" Marius called for his duty officer. "Send me three reliable men, would you?" he asked. "And see if you can find comfortable quarters for King Copillus here. He'll have to be locked up, unfortunately, but only until we can get him away to Rome." "I wouldn't put him in Rome," said Sulla thoughtfully, when the duty officer had departed. "In fact, I'd be very quiet about where I did put him, anyway." "Caepio? He wouldn't dare!" said Marius. "He purloined the gold," said Sulla. "All right, we'll put the King in Nersia," said Marius briskly.' 'Quintus Sertorius, has your mother got any friends who wouldn't mind housing the King for a year or two? I'll make sure the money's good." "She'll find someone," said Sertorius confidently. "What a piece of luck!'' crowed Marius. “I never thought we'd get the evidence to send Caepio into well-deserved exile, but King Copillus is it. We'll keep it very quiet until we're all back in Rome after the Germans are beaten, then we'll arraign Caepio on charges of extortion and treason!" "Treason?" asked Sulla, blinking. "Not with the friends he's got in the Centuries!" "Ah," said Marius blandly, "but friends in the Centuries can't help him when he's tried in a special treason court manned only by knights." "What are you up to, Gaius Marius?" Sulla demanded. "I've got myself two tribunes of the plebs for next year!'' said Marius triumphantly. "They mightn't get in," said Sertorius prosaically. "They'll get in!" said Marius and Sulla in chorus. Then all three laughed, and the prisoner continued to stand with great dignity, pretending he could understand their Latin, and waiting for whatever was to befall him next. At which point Marius remembered his manners and shifted the conversation from Latin to Greek, drawing Copillus warmly into the group, and promising that his chains would soon be struck off.
3
"Do you know, Quintus Caecilius," said Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus to Metellus Numidicus, "I am thoroughly enjoying my stint as the quaestor of Ostia? Here I am, fifty-five years old, bald as an egg, lines on my face so deep my barber can't give me a really clean shave anymore and I'm feeling like a boy again! Oh, and the ease with which one solves the problems! At thirty, they loomed like insurmountable alps I remember it well. At fifty-five, they're piddling little cobblestones." Scaurus had come back to Rome for a special meeting of the Senate convened by the praetor urbanus Gaius Memmius to discuss a matter of some concern regarding Sardinia; the junior consul, Gaius Flavius Fimbria, was indisposed -a common occurrence these days, it seemed to many. "Did you hear the rumor?" asked Metellus Numidicus as the two of them strolled up the steps of the Curia Hostilia and passed inside; the herald had not yet summoned the House to convene, but most senators who arrived early didn't bother waiting outside they went straight in and continued their talk until the meeting started with the convening magistrate offering a sacrifice and prayers. "What rumor?" asked Scaurus a little inattentively; his mind these days tended to be absorbed with the grain supply. "Lucius Cassius and Lucius Marcius have clubbed together and intend to put it to the Plebeian Assembly that Gaius Marius be allowed to stand for consul again in absentia, no less!" Scaurus stopped a few feet short of where his personal attendant had set up his stool in its customary front-rank position next to the stool of Metellus Numidicus, and with Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus on his other side. His eyes rested on Numidicus's face, wide with shock. "They wouldn't dare!" he said. "Oh yes they would! Can you imagine it? A third term as consul is unprecedented it's to make the man a long-term dictator! Why else on those rare occasions when Rome needed a dictator was the term of a dictator limited to six months, if not to make sure that the man holding the office got no inflated idea of his own supremacy? And now, here we are with this this peasant making up his own rules as he goes along!" Metellus Numidicus was spitting in rage. Scaurus sank down onto his stool like an old man. "It's our own fault," he said slowly. "We haven't had the courage of our predecessors and rid ourselves of this noxious mushroom! Why is it that Tiberius Gracchus and Marcus Fulvius and Gaius Gracchus were eliminated, where Gaius Marius survives? He ought to have been cut down years ago!" Metellus Numidicus shrugged. "He's a peasant. The Gracchi and Fulvius Flaccus were noblemen. Noxious mushroom is the right way to describe him he pops up somewhere overnight, but by the time you arrive to weed him out, he's gone somewhere else." "It has to stop!" cried Scaurus. “No one can be elected to the consulship in absentia, let alone twice running! That man has tampered in more ways with Rome's traditions of government than any man in the entire history of the Republic. I am beginning to believe that he wants to be King of Rome, not the First Man in Rome." "I agree," said Metellus Numidicus, sitting down. "But how can we rid ourselves of him, I ask you? He's never here for long enough to assassinate!" "Lucius Cassius and Lucius Marcius," said Scaurus in tones of wonder. "I don't understand! They're noblemen from the finest, oldest plebeian families! Can't someone appeal to their sense of fitness, of of decency?" "Well, we all know about Lucius Marcius," said Metellus Numidicus. "Marius bought up all his debts; he's solvent for the first time in his rather revolting life. But Lucius Cassius is different. He's become morbidly sensitive about the People's opinion of incompetent generals like his late father, and morbidly aware of Marius's reputation among the People. I think he thinks that if he's seen helping Marius rid us of the Germans, he'll retrieve his family's reputation." "Humph!" was all Scaurus said to this piece of theorizing. Further discussion was impossible; the House convened, and Gaius Memmius looking very haggard these days, and in consequence handsomer than ever rose to speak. "Conscript Fathers," he said, a short document in his hand, "I have received a letter from Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo in Sardinia. It was addressed to me rather than to our esteemed consul Gaius Flavius because, as urban praetor, it is my duty to supervise the law courts of Rome." He paused to glare fiercely at the back ranks of senators, and contrived to appear almost ugly; the back ranks of senators got the message, and put on their most attentive expressions. "To remind those of you at the back who hardly ever bother to honor this House with your presence, Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo is quaestor to the governor of Sardinia, who to remind you! is Titus Annius Albucius this year. Now do we all understand these complicated relationships, Conscript Fathers?" he asked, voice dripping sarcasm. There was a general mumble, which Memmius took as assent. "Good!" he said. "Then I shall read out Gnaeus Pompeius's letter to me. Are we all listening?" Another mumble. "Good!" Memmius unfurled the paper in his hand and held it out before him, then began to read with a clear, crisp diction no one afterward could have faulted.
"I write, Gaius Memmius, to request that I be allowed to prosecute Titus Annius Albucius, governor propraetore of our province of Sardinia, immediately upon our return to Rome at the end of the year. As the House is aware, one month ago Titus Annius reported that he had succeeded in stamping out brigandage in his province, and requested an ovation for his work. His request for an ovation was refused, and rightly so. Though some nests of these pernicious fellows were eradicated, the province is by no means free of brigands. But the reason I wish to prosecute the governor lies in his un-Roman conduct after he learned that his request for an ovation had been denied. Not only did he refer to the members of the Senate as a pack of unappreciative irrumatores, but he proceeded at great expense to celebrate a mock triumph through the streets of Carales! I regard his actions as threats to the Senate and People of Rome, and his triumph as treasonous. In fact, so strongly do I feel that I am adamant no one other than myself shall conduct the prosecution. Please answer me in good time."
Memmius laid the letter down amid a profound silence. "I would appreciate an opinion from the learned Leader of the House, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus," he said, and sat down. His lined face grim, Scaurus walked to the middle of the floor. "How strange," he began, "that I was speaking of matters not unlike this just before the House convened. Of matters indicating the erosion of our time-honored systems of government and personal conduct in government. In recent years, this august body composed of Rome's greatest men has suffered the loss not only of its power, but of its dignity as Rome's senior arm in government. We Rome's greatest men! are no longer permitted to direct the path Rome treads. We Rome's greatest men! have become used to the People fickle, untrained, greedy, thoughtless, part-time and good-time amateur politicians at best have become used to the People grinding our faces into the mud! We Rome's greatest men! are held of no account! Our wisdom, our experience, the distinction of our families over the many generations since the founding of the Republic, all have ceased to matter. Only the People matter. And I say to you, Conscript Fathers, that the People are not qualified to govern Rome!" He turned toward the open doors, and threw his voice in the direction of the well of the Comitia. "What segment of the People runs the Plebeian Assembly?" he bellowed. "The men of the Second and Third and even Fourth Classes minor knights ambitious to run Rome like their businesses, shopkeepers and smallholding farmers, even artisans grown large enough to run 'multiple sculpturals,' as I saw one yard describe itself! And men who call themselves advocates, but who must hawk for clients among the bucolic and the imbecilic, and men who call themselves agents, but can never quite describe what they are agents for! Their private activities bore them, so they frequent the Comitia flattering themselves that they in their precious tribes can run Rome better than we in our Curiate exclusivity! Political cant dribbles off their tongues as noisome and lumpy as vomit, and they prate of entertaining this or that tribune of the plebs, and applaud when senatorial prerogatives are handed over to the knights! They are middlemen, these fellows! Neither great enough to belong to the First Class of the Centuries, nor lowly enough to mind their own business like the Fifth Class and the Head Count! I say to you again, Conscript Fathers, that the People are not qualified to govern Rome! Too much power has been accorded to them, and in their overweening arrogance aided and abetted, I might add, by sundry members of this House when tribunes of the plebs! they now presume to ignore our advice, our directives, and our persons!" This, everyone recognized, was going to be one of Scaurus's more memorable speeches; his own secretary and several other scribes were busy scribbling his words down verbatim, and he was speaking slowly enough to make sure his words were properly recorded. "It is high time," he went on sonorously, "that we of the Senate reversed this process. It is high time that we showed the People that they are the juniors in our joint governing venture!" He drew a breath, and spoke conversationally. "Of course the origins of this erosion of senatorial power are easy to pinpoint. This august body has admitted too many parvenus, too many noxious mushrooms, too many New Men into its senior magistracies. What does the Senate of Rome honestly mean to a man who had to wipe the pig-shit off his face before he came to Rome to try his political luck? What does the Senate of Rome mean to a man who is at best a half Latin from the Samnite borderlands who rode into his first consulship on the skirts of a patrician woman he bought! And what does the Senate of Rome mean to a cross-eyed hybrid from the Celt-infested hills of northern Picenum?" Naturally Scaurus was going to attack Marius, that was to be expected; but his approach was tangential enough to be refreshing, and the House felt itself properly rebuked. So the House listened on in a spirit of interest as well as duty. "Our sons, Conscript Fathers," said Scaurus sadly, "are timid creatures, growing up in a political atmosphere which suffocates the Senate of Rome even as it breathes life into the People of Rome. How can we expect our sons to lead Rome in their turn, when the People cow them? I say to you if you have not already begun, today you must begin to educate your sons to be strong for the Senate, and merciless to the People! Make them understand the natural superiority of the Senate! And make them prepared to fight to maintain that natural superiority!" He had moved away from the doors, and now addressed his speech to the tribunes' bench, which was full. "Can anyone tell me why a member of this august House would deliberately set out to undermine it? Can anyone? Because it happens all the time! There they sit, calling themselves senators members of this august House! yet also calling themselves tribunes of the plebs! Serving two masters these days! I say, let them remember they are senators first, and tribunes of the plebs only after that. Their real duty toward the plebs is to educate the plebs in a subordinate role. But do they do that? No! Of course they don't! Some of these tribunes remain loyal to their rightful order, I acknowledge, and I commend them highly. Some, as is always the way in the annals of men, accomplish nothing for Senate or for People, too afraid that if they sit to either end of the tribunes' bench, the rest will get up, and they will be tipped on the ground and turn themselves into laughingstocks. But some, Conscript Fathers, deliberately set out to undermine this august body, the Senate of Rome. Why? What could possibly lead them to destroy their own order?" The ten on the bench sat in various attitudes which clearly reflected their political attitudes: the loyal senatorial tribunes were glowing, upright, smug; the men on the middle of the bench wriggled a little, and kept their eyes on the floor; and the active tribunes sat with eyes and faces hard, defiant, impenitent. "I can tell you why, fellow senators," said Scaurus, voice oozing contempt. "Some allow themselves to be bought like pinchbeck gewgaws on a cheap market stall those men we all understand! But others have more subtle reasons, and of these men the first was Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus. I speak of the kind of tribune of the plebs who sees in the plebs a tool to further his own ambitions, the kind of man who craves the status of the First Man in Rome without earning it among his peers, as Scipio Aemilianus did, and Scipio Africanus, and Aemilius Paullus, and if I may beg your collective pardon for my presumption Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus! We have borrowed a word from the Greeks to describe the Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus style of tribune of the plebs: we call them demagogues. However, we do not use it in precisely the way that the Greeks do. Our demagogues don't bring the whole city into the Forum screaming for blood, and tear down senators bodily from the steps of the Curia, and work their will through mass violence. Our demagogues content themselves with inflaming the habitual frequenters of the Comitia, and work their will through legislation. Oh, there is violence from time to time, but more often than not, it is we of the Senate who have had to resort to violence to re-establish the status quo. For our demagogues are legislators and legal draftsmen, more subtle, more vindictive, more dangerous by far than simple inciters of riots! They corrupt the People to further their own ambitions. And that, Conscript Fathers, is beneath contempt. Yet every day it is done, and every day it grows more prevalent. The shortcut to power, the easy road to pre-eminence." He broke off, took a turn about the floor, clutched the massive folds of his purple-bordered toga with his left hand as they fell forward over his left shoulder and cuddled into his neck, flexed his bare right arm so it could continue to emphasize his words by gestures. "The shortcut to power, the easy road to pre-eminence," he repeated sonorously. "Well, we all know these men, don't we? first among them is Gaius Marius, our esteemed senior consul, who I hear is about to have himself elected consul yet again, and yet again in absentia! By our wish? No! Through the medium of the People, of course! How else could Gaius Marius have got where he is today, except through the medium of the People? Some of us have fought him, and fought him tooth and nail, and fought him to exhaustion, and fought him with every legal weapon in our constitutional arsenal! To no avail. Gaius Marius has the support of the People, the ear of the People, and pours money into the purses of some of the tribunes of the plebs. In this day and age, those are enough. Rich as Croesus, he can buy what he cannot get any other way. Such is Gaius Marius. But it is not Gaius Marius I rose to discuss. You will forgive me, Conscript Fathers, for allowing my emotions to carry me too far from the main thrust of my oration.'' He walked back to his original position, and turned to face the dais whereon sat the curule magistrates, and addressed his remarks to Gaius Memmius. "I rose to speak about another upstart, a less noticeable sort of upstart than Gaius Marius. The sort of upstart who claims ancestors in the Senate, and can speak good Greek, and has been educated, and lives in his home with a vastness of power ensuring that his eyes have never rested upon pig-shit if, that is, his eyes could see anything at all! Not a Roman of the Romans, for all he claims otherwise. I speak of the quaestor Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, deputed by this august House to serve the governor of Sardinia, Titus Annius Albucius. "Now who is this Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo? A Pompey, who claims blood relationship to the Pompeys in this House for some generations, though it would be interesting to discover just how close the blood links are. Rich as Croesus, half of northern Italy in his clientship, a king inside the borders of his own lands. That's who is this Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo." Scaurus's voice rose to a roar. "Members of the Senate, what is this august body coming to, when a brand-new senator in the guise of a quaestor has the temerity and the the crossness to indict his superior? How short of young Roman men are we, that we cannot put Roman arses on a mere three hundred seats? I am scandalized! Does this Pompey Cross-eyes really possess so little education in the niceties of behavior expected from a member of the Senate that he could even dream of indicting his superior? What is the matter with us, that we are letting the likes of this Pompey Cross-eyes put his uncouth arse on a senatorial stool? And what is the matter with him, that he could do such a thing? Ignorance and lack of breeding, that's what's the matter with him! Some things, Conscript Fathers, are just not done! Things like indicting one's superior or one's close relatives, including relatives by marriage. Not done! Crass bovine ill-mannered underbred presumptuous stupid our Latin language does not possess sufficient scathing epithets whereby to catalogue the shortcomings of such a noxious mushroom as this Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, this Pompey Cross-eyes!" A voice came from the tribunes' bench. "Are you inferring, Marcus Aemilius, that Titus Annius Albucius is to be lauded for his behavior?" asked Lucius Cassius. The Princeps Senatus drew himself up like a cobra, and just as venomously. "Oh, grow up, Lucius Cassius!" he said. "The issue here is not Titus Annius. Naturally he will be dealt with in the appropriate manner, which in his case is prosecution. If he is found guilty, he will incur the proper punishment the law prescribes. The issue here is protocol, politesse, etiquette in plain words, Lucius Cassius, manners. Our noxious mushroom Pompey Cross-eyes is guilty of a flagrant breach of manners!'' He faced the House. "I move, Conscript Fathers, that Titus Annius Albucius answer charges of a treasonable nature but that the praetor urbanus shall at the same time write a very stiff letter to the quaestor Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo informing him that, one, under no circumstances will he be permitted to prosecute his superior, and that, two, he has the manners of a boor." The House voted with a flourishing flapping of hands, making a Division unnecessary. "I think, Gaius Memmius," said Lucius Marcius Philippus in a nasal drawl of vastly aristocratic superiority (he was smarting at Scaurus's inference that Marius had bought his services), "that the House should at this time appoint a prosecutor to deal with the case of Titus Annius Albucius." "Do I hear any objections?" asked Memmius, looking around. No one objected. "Very well, let it be tabled that the House will appoint a prosecutor in the case of the State versus Titus Annius Albucius. Do I hear any names?" asked Memmius. "Oh, my dear praetor urbanus, there is only one possible name!" said Philippus, still drawling. "Then speak it, Lucius Marcius." "Why, our learned young man of the courts Caesar Strabo," said Philippus. "I mean, let us not utterly deprive Titus Annius of the sensation that he is being hounded by a voice from his past! I do think his prosecutor must be cross-eyed!" The House fell about laughing, Scaurus hardest of all; and when the hilarity died down, voted unanimously to appoint the cross-eyed young Gaius Julius Caesar Strabo youngest brother of Catulus Caesar and Lucius Caesar as Titus Annius Albucius's prosecutor. And in so doing, revenged itself tellingly upon Pompey Strabo. When Pompey Strabo received the Senate's stiff letter (plus a copy of Scaurus's speech, thrown in by Gaius Memmius to rub salt into the wound), he got the message. And vowed that one day he would have all those high-and-mighty aristocrats on the hop, needing him more than he needed them.
Fight strenuously though they did, neither Scaurus nor Metellus Numidicus could swing enough votes in the Plebeian Assembly to avert the nomination of Gaius Marius as a candidate for the consulship in absentia. Nor could they sway the Centuriate Assembly, for the Second Class of voters was still smarting at Scaurus's inference during his memorable speech that they were mere middlemen, and as reprehensible as the Third and Fourth Classes. The Centuriate Assembly gave Gaius Marius a continued mandate to stop the Germans, and would not hear of any other man's taking his place. Elected senior consul for the second time in a row, Gaius Marius was the man of the hour, and might without fear of contradiction claim to be the First Man in Rome. "But not primus inter pares first among equals," said Metellus Numidicus to young Marcus Livius Drusus, returned to the law courts after his short-lived military career of the year before. They had encountered each other in front of the urban praetor's tribunal, where Drusus was standing with his friend and brother-in-law, Caepio Junior. "I am afraid, Quintus Caecilius," said Drusus without an ounce of apology in his tone, "that for once I did not subscribe to the thinking of my peers. I voted for Gaius Marius yes, that stops you in your tracks, doesn't it? Not only did I vote for Gaius Marius, but I prevailed upon most of my friends and all my clients to vote for him as well." "You're a traitor to your class!" snapped Numidicus. "Not at all, Quintus Caecilius. You see, I was at Arausio," said Drusus quietly. "I saw at first hand what can happen when senatorial exclusivity overcomes the dictates of good sound Roman common sense. And I say to you flatly that if Gaius Marius was as cross-eyed as Caesar Strabo, as crass as Pompey Strabo, as lowborn as a laborer in the Port of Rome, as vulgar as the knight Sextus Perquitienus still I would have voted for him! I do not believe we have another military man of his caliber, and I will not countenance placing a consul over him who would treat him as Quintus Servilius Caepio treated Gnaeus Mallius Maximus!" And Drusus walked away with great dignity, leaving Metellus Numidicus staring after him openmouthed. "He's changed," said Caepio Junior, who still followed Drusus about, but with less enthusiasm since their return from Gaul-across-the-Alps. "My father says that if Marcus Livius isn't careful, he'll turn into a demagogue of the worst kind." "He couldn't!" cried Metellus Numidicus. "Why, his father the censor was Gaius Gracchus's most obdurate foe young Marcus Livius has been brought up in the most conservative way!" "Arausio changed him," maintained Caepio Junior. "Maybe it was the blow to his head that's what my father thinks, anyway. Ever since he came back, he's stayed as thick as thieves with the Marsic fellow Silo he befriended after the battle." He snorted. "Silo comes down from Alba Fucentia and lords it around Marcus Livius's house as if he owns it, and they sit for hours and hours talking, and they never ask me to join in." "A regrettable affair, Arausio," said Metellus Numidicus, laboring a little, since he was passing these remarks to the son of the man who had incurred most of the blame. Caepio Junior escaped as soon as he could, and walked home conscious of a vague dissatisfaction which had wrapped him round from the time oh, he didn't know really, but somewhere about the time he had married Drusus's sister, and Drusus had married his sister. There was no reason why he should feel this way; he just did. And things had changed so since Arausio! His father wasn't the same man either; one moment he would be chuckling gleefully at a joke Caepio Junior didn't understand, the next moment he would be down in the depths of despair at the swelling tide of public resentment for Arausio, and only moments later he would be shouting in rage at the injustice of it all what he meant by "it all" Caepio Junior had not been able to work out. Nor could Caepio Junior's feelings about Arausio ever be free from guilt; while Drusus and Sertorius and Sextus Caesar and even that Silo fellow lay on the field given up for dead, he had run away across the river like a kicked cur, no less anxious to survive than the least Head Count raw recruit in his legion. Naturally this had never been spoken to anyone, even his father; it was Caepio Junior's awful secret. Yet every day when he met Drusus, he wondered what Drusus suspected. His wife, Livia Drusa, was in her sitting room, her infant daughter on her knee, for she had just finished breast-feeding the mite. As always, his advent produced a smile, and that should have warmed him. But it never did. Her eyes were at odds with the rest of her face, for no smile ever reached inside them, and no interest ever flared out of them. Whenever she spoke to him or listened to him speaking, Caepio Junior was aware that her eyes never looked into his, even for a moment. And yet, no man was ever blessed with a nicer, more accommodating wife. She was never too tired or unwell to receive his sexual advances, nor did she object to any sexual request he made of her. Of course at such times he couldn't see her eyes; how then could he know so positively they held not a scrap of pleasure? A more perceptive and intelligent man would have gently taxed Livia Drusa with these things, but Caepio Junior tended to put it all down to his own imagination, having too little imagination to understand he lacked it. Mentally acute enough to know there was something radically wrong, he was not mentally acute enough to make the correct assumptions. Certainly it never occurred to him that she didn't love him, though before they married he had been sure she positively disliked him. But that had been his imagination. For she could not have disliked him, when she had proven a model Roman wife. Therefore she must love him. His daughter, Servilia, was an object rather than a human creature to Caepio Junior, disappointed that he hadn't been dowered with a son. So now he sat down while Livia Drusa gave the baby a few rubs on the back, then handed her over to her Macedonian nursemaid. "Did you know that your brother actually voted for Gaius Marius in the consular elections?" he asked. Livia Drusa's eyes widened. "No. Are you sure?" "He said so today, to Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus. While I was there. Waffled on about being at Arausio. Oh, I wish my father's enemies would let that die a natural death!" "Give it time, Quintus Servilius." "It's getting worse," said Caepio Junior despondently. "Are you in to dinner?" "No, on my way out again, actually. Going to eat at Lucius Licinius Orator's house. Marcus Livius will be there too." "Oh," said Livia Drusa flatly. "Sorry, did mean to tell you this morning. Just forgot," said her husband, getting up. "You don't mind, do you?" "No, of course not," said Livia Drusa tonelessly. Of course she did mind, not because she craved her husband's company, but because a little forethought on his part might have saved both money and effort in the kitchen. They lived with Caepio the father, who was forever complaining about the size of the household bills, and forever blaming Livia Drusa for not being a more careful housekeeper. It never occurred to Caepio the father any more than it did to his son that neither of them bothered to apprise her of their movements, and so every day she was obliged to make sure a proper dinner was prepared, even if no one turned up to eat it, and it went back almost untouched to slide down the gullets of Caepio the father's ecstatic slaves. "Domina, shall I take the baby back to the nursery?" the Macedonian girl asked. Livia Drusa started out of her reverie, nodded. "Yes," she said, not even giving the child a glance in passing as the maid carried her off. That she was breast-feeding her daughter was not out of any consideration for the welfare of baby Servilia; it was because she knew while ever she gave the baby her milk, she would not conceive again. She didn't care for baby Servilia very much; every time she looked at the mite, she saw a miniature copy of the mite's father short legs, a darkness so dark it was disquieting, a dense coat of black hair along spine, arms and legs, and a shock of coarse black head hair which grew low down on the forehead and the back of the neck like an animal's pelt. To Livia Drusa, little Servilia possessed no virtues whatsoever. She didn't even attempt to list the baby's assets, which were by no means contemptible, for she had a pair of black eyes so big and dark that they promised great beauty later on, and the tiniest rosebud of a mouth, still and secretive, another harbinger of beauty. The eighteen months of her marriage had not reconciled Livia Drusa to her fate, though never once did she disobey her brother Drusus's orders; her courtesy and demeanor were perfect. Even in the midst of her frequent sexual encounters with Caepio Junior, she behaved impeccably. Luckily her high birth and status precluded an ardent response; Caepio Junior would have been appalled if she had moaned in ecstasy or thrown herself around in the bed as if she enjoyed herself in the manner of a mistress. All she was obliged to do, she did in the manner her wifehood dictated flat on her back, no fancy hipwork, a suitable meed of warmth, and unassailable modesty. Oh, but it was difficult! More difficult than any other aspect of her life, for when her husband touched her she wanted to scream rape and violation, and vomit in his face. There was no room in her to pity Caepio Junior, who in actual fact had never really done anything to deserve the passionate revulsion she felt for him. By now, he and her brother Drusus had merged indissolubly into a single vast and threatening presence capable of reducing her to far worse circumstances; hideously afraid of them, she moved on day by day toward death aware that she was never going to know what it was like to live. Worst of all was her geographical exile. The Servilius Caepio house was on the Circus Maximus side of the Palatine, looked across to the Aventine, and had no houses below it, just a steep and rocky cliff. There were no more chances to stand on Drusus's loggia watching the balcony of the house underneath for a glimpse of her red-haired Odysseus. And Caepio the father was a singularly unpleasant man who grew steadily more unpleasant as time went on; he didn't even have a wife to lighten Livia Drusa's burden, though so remote was he and so remote was her relationship with his son that she never found the courage to ask either of them whether the wife/mother was alive or dead. Of course Caepio the father's temper was tried more and more as time went on because of his part in the disaster at Arausio. First he had been stripped of his imperium, then the tribune of the plebs Lucius Cassius Longinus had succeeded in passing a law stripping his seat in the Senate from him, and now hardly a month went by without some enterprising would-be crowd pleaser trying to prosecute him on thinly veiled treason charges. Virtually confined to his house by the virulent hatred of the People and his own lively sense of self-preservation, Caepio the father spent a good deal of his time watching Livia Drusa and criticizing her remorselessly. However, she didn't help matters by doing some very silly things. One day her father-in-law's mania for watching her made her so angry that she marched out into the middle of the peristyle-garden where no one could overhear what she said, and began to talk to herself aloud. The moment the slaves began to gather beneath the colonnade and whisper debates as to what she might be doing, Caepio the father erupted out of his study with a face like flint. Down the path he came and stood over her fiercely. "What do you think you're doing, girl?" he demanded. Her big dark eyes opened guilessly wide. "I'm reciting the lay of King Odysseus," she said. "Well, don't!" snarled her father-in-law. "You're making a spectacle of yourself! The servants are saying you've gone off your head! If you must recite Homer, then do it where people can hear it's Homer! Though why you'd want to beats me." "It passes the time," she said. "There are better ways to pass the time, girl. Set up your loom, or sing to your baby, or do whatever else women do. Go on, go on, go away!" "I don't know what women do, Father," she said, getting to her feet. "What do women do?" "Drive men insane!" he said, went back into his study and shut the door with a snap. After that she went even further, for she took Caepio the father's advice and set up her loom. The only trouble was, she began to weave the first of a whole series of funeral dresses, and as she worked she talked very loudly to an imaginary King Odysseus, pretending that he had been away for years and she was weaving funeral dresses to stave off the day when she must choose a new husband; every so often she would pause in her monologue and sit with head cocked to one side, as if she were listening to someone speak. This time Caepio the father sent his son to find out what was the matter. "I'm weaving my funeral dress," she said calmly, "and trying to find out when King Odysseus is coming home to rescue me. He will rescue me, you know. One day." Caepio Junior gaped. "Rescue you? What are you talking about, Livia Drusa?" "I never set foot outside this house," she said. Flinging his hands up, Caepio Junior made a small sound of exasperation. “Well, what's to stop you going out if you want to, for Juno's sake?" Her jaw dropped; she could think of nothing to say except "I don't have any money." "You want money? I'll give you money, Livia Drusa! Just stop worrying my father!" cried Caepio Junior, goaded from two directions. "Go out whenever you want! Buy whatever you want!" Face wreathed in smiles, she walked across the room and kissed her husband on the cheek. "Thank you," she said, and meant it so sincerely that she actually hugged him. It had been as easy as that! All those years of enforced isolation were gone. For it had not occurred to Livia Drusa that in passing from the authority of her brother to the authority of her husband and his father, the rules might have changed a little.
4
When Lucius Appuleius Saturninus was elected a tribune of the plebs, his gratitude to Gaius Marius knew no bounds. Now he could vindicate himself! Nor was he completely without allies, as he soon discovered; one of the other tribunes of the plebs was a client of Marius's from Etruria, one Gaius Norbanus, who had considerable wealth but no senatorial clout because he had no senatorial background. And there was a Marcus Baebius, one of the ever-tribuning Baebius clan who were justly notorious for their bribe taking; he might be bought if it proved necessary. Unfortunately the opposite end of the tribunes' bench was occupied by three formidably conservative opponents. On the very end of the bench was Lucius Aurelius Cotta, son of the dead consul Cotta, nephew of the ex-praetor Marcus Cotta, and half brother of Aurelia, the wife of young Gaius Julius Caesar. Next to him sat Lucius Antistius Reginus, of respectable but not spectacular background, and rumored to be a client of the consular Quintus Servilius Caepio, therefore faintly smeared with Caepio's odium. The third man was Titus Didius, a very efficient and quiet man whose family had originally hailed from Campania, and who had made himself a considerable reputation as a soldier. Those in the middle of the bench were very humble tribunes of the plebs, and seemed to think that their chief role throughout the coming year was going to be keeping the opposite ends of the bench from tearing each other's throats out. For indeed there was no love lost between the men Scaurus would have apostrophized as demagogues and the men Scaurus commended for never losing sight of the fact that they were senators before they were tribunes of the plebs. Not that Saturninus was worried. He had swept into office at the top of the college, followed closely by Gaius Norbanus, which gave the conservatives notice that the People had lost none of their affection for Gaius Marius and that Marius had thought it worthwhile to spend a great deal of his money buying votes for Saturninus and Norbanus. It was necessary that Saturninus and Norbanus strike swiftly, for interest in the Plebeian Assembly waned dramatically after some three months of the year had gone by; this was partly due to boredom on the part of the People, and partly due to the fact that no tribune of the plebs could keep up the pace for longer than three months. The tribune of the plebs spent himself early, like Aesop's hare, while the old senatorial tortoise kept plodding on at the same rate. "All they'll see is my dust," Saturninus said to Glaucia as the tenth day of the month of December drew near, the day upon which the new college would enter office. "What's first?" asked Glaucia idly, a little put out that he, older than Saturninus, had not yet found the opportunity to seek election as a tribune of the plebs. Saturninus grinned wolfishly. "A little agrarian law," he said, "to help my friend and benefactor Gaius Marius." With great care in his planning and through the medium of a magnificent speech, Saturninus tabled for discussion a law to distribute the ager Africanus insularum, reserved in the public domain by Lucius Marcius Philippus one year before; it was now to be divided among Marius's Head Count soldiers at the end of their service in the legions, at the rate of a hundred iugera per man. Oh, how he enjoyed it! The howls of approbation from the People, the howls of outrage from the Senate, the fist that Lucius Cotta raised, the strong and candid speech Gaius Norbanus made in support of his measure. "I never realized how interesting the tribunate of the plebs can be," he said after the contio meeting was dissolved, and he and Glaucia dined alone at Glaucia's house. "Well, you certainly had the Policy Makers on the defensive," said Glaucia, grinning at the memory. "I thought Metellus Numidicus was going to rupture a blood vessel!" "A pity he didn't." Saturninus lay back with a sigh of content, eyes roaming reflectively over the patterns sooty smoke from lamps and braziers had made on the ceiling, which was badly in need of new paint. "Odd how they think, isn't it? Even breathe the words 'agrarian bill' and they're up in arms, yelling about the Brothers Gracchi, horrified at the idea of giving something away for nothing to men without the wit to acquire anything. Even the Head Count doesn't approve of giving something away for nothing!" "Well, it's a pretty novel concept to all right-thinking Romans, really," said Glaucia. "And after they got over that, they started to yell about the huge size of the allotments ten times the size of a smallholding in Campania, moaned the Policy Makers. You'd think they'd know without being told that an island in the African Lesser Syrtis isn't one tenth as fertile as the worst smallholding in Campania, nor the rainfall one tenth as reliable," said Saturninus. "Yes, but the debate was really about so many thousands of new clients for Gaius Marius, wasn't it?" asked Glaucia. "That's where the shoe actually pinches, you know. Every retired veteran in a Head Count army is a potential client for his general especially when his general has gone to the trouble of securing him a piece of land for his old age. He's beholden! Only he doesn't see that it's the State that is his true benefactor, since the State has to find the land. He thanks his general. He thanks Gaius Marius. And that's what the Policy Makers are up in arms about.'' "Agreed. But fighting it isn't the answer, Gaius Servilius. The answer is to enact a general law covering all Head Count armies for all time ten iugera of good land to every man who completes his time in the legions say, fifteen years? Twenty, even? Given irrespective of how many generals the soldier serves under, or how many different campaigns he sees." Glaucia laughed in genuine amusement. "That's too much like good sound common sense, Lucius Appuleius! And think of the knights a law like that would alienate. Less land for them to lease not to mention our esteemed pastoralist senators!" "If the land was in Italy, I'd see it," said Saturninus. "But the islands off the coast of Africa? I ask you, Gaius Servilius! Of what conceivable use are they to these dogs guarding their stinking old bones? Compared to the millions of iugera Gaius Marius gave away in the name of Rome along the Ubus and the Chelif and around Lake Tritonis and all to exactly the same men currently screaming! this is a pittance!" Glaucia rolled his long-lashed grey-green eyes, lay flat on his back, flapped his hands like a stranded turtle his flippers, and started to laugh again. "I liked Scaurus's speech best, though. He's clever, that one. The rest of them don't matter much apart from their clout." He lifted his head and stared at Saturninus. "Are you prepared for tomorrow in the Senate?" he asked. "I believe so," said Saturninus happily. "Lucius Appuleius returns to the Senate! And this time they can't throw me out before my term in office is finished! It would take the thirty-five tribes to do that, and they won't do that. Whether the Policy Makers like it or not, I'm back inside their hallowed portals as angry as a wasp and just as nasty."
He entered the Senate as if he owned it, with a sweeping obeisance to Scaurus Princeps Senatus, and flourishes of his right hand to each side of the House, which was almost full, a sure sign of a coming battle. The outcome, he decided, did not matter very much, for the arena in which the real conflict would be decided lay outside the Curia Hostilia's doors, down in the well of the Comitia; this was brazening-it-out day, the disgraced grain quaestor transmogrified into the tribune of the plebs, a bitter surprise indeed for the Policy Makers. And for the Conscript Fathers of the Senate he took a new tack, one he fully intended to present later in the Plebeian Assembly; this would be a trial run. "Rome's sphere of influence has not been limited to Italy for a very long time," he said. "All of us know the trouble King Jugurtha caused Rome. All of us are forever grateful to the esteemed senior consul, Gaius Marius, for settling the war in Africa so brilliantly and so finally. But how can we in Rome today guarantee the generations to come that our provinces will be peaceful and their fruits ours to enjoy? We have a tradition concerning the customs of peoples not Roman, though they live in our provinces they are free to pursue their religious practices, their trade practices, their political practices. Provided these pursuits do not hamper Rome, or offer a threat to Rome. But one of the less desirable side effects of our tradition of noninterference is ignorance. Not one of our provinces further from Italy than Italian Gaul and Sicily knows enough about Rome and Romans to favor co-operation over resistance. Had the people of Numidia known more about us, Jugurtha would never have managed to persuade them to follow him. Had the people of Mauretania known more about us, Jugurtha would never have managed to persuade King Bocchus to follow him." He cleared his throat; the House was taking it well so far but then, he hadn't reached his conclusion. Now he did. "Which brings me to the matter of the ager Africanus insularum. Strategically these islands are of little importance. In size they are modest. None of us here in this House will miss them. They contain no gold, no silver, no iron, no exotic spices. They are not particularly fertile when compared to the fabulous grainlands of the Bagradas River, where quite a few of us here in this House own properties, as do many knights of the First Class. So why not give them to Gaius Marius's Head Count soldiers upon their retirement? Do we really want close to forty thousand Head Count veterans frequenting the taverns and alleys of Rome? Jobless, aimless, penniless after they've spent their tiny shares of the army's booty? Isn't it better for them and for Rome! to settle them on the ager Africanus insularum? For, Conscript Fathers, there is one job left that they in their retirement can do. They can bring Rome to the province of Africa! Our language, our customs, our gods, our very way of life! Through these brave and cheerful expatriate Roman soldiers, the peoples of Africa Province can come to understand Rome better, for these brave and cheerful expatriate Roman soldiers are ordinary no richer, no brighter, no more privileged than many among the native peoples they will mingle with on a day-to-day basis. Some will marry local girls. All will fraternize. And the result will be less war, greater peace." It was said persuasively, reasonably, without any of the grander periods and gestures of Asianic rhetoric, and as he warmed to his peroration Saturninus began to believe that he would make them, the pigheaded members of this elite body, see at last where the vision of men like Gaius Marius and himself! would lead their beloved Rome. And when he moved back to his end of the tribunes' bench, he sensed nothing in the silence to gainsay his conviction. Until he realized that they were waiting. Waiting for one of the Policy Makers to point the way. Sheep. Sheep, sheep, sheep. Wretched woolly pea-brained sheep. "May I?" asked Lucius Caecilius Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus of the presiding magistrate, the junior consul, Gaius Flavius Fimbria. "You have the floor, Lucius Caecilius," said Fimbria. He took the floor, his anger, well concealed until that moment, breaking the bounds of control with the sudden flare of tinder. "Rome is exclusive!" he trumpeted, so loudly that some of the listeners jumped. "How dare any Roman elevated to membership of this House propose a program aimed at turning the rest of the world into imitation Romans?" Dalmaticus's normal pose of superior aloofness had vanished; he swelled up, empurpled, the veins beneath his plump pink cheeks no darker than those selfsame cheeks. And he trembled, he vibrated almost as quickly as the wings of a moth, so angry was he. Fascinated, awed, every last man present in the House sat forward to listen to a Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus no one had ever dreamed existed. "Well, Conscript Fathers, we all know this particular Roman, don't we?" he brayed. "Lucius Appuleius Saturninus is a thief an exploiter of food shortages an effeminate vulgarity a polluter of little boys who harbors filthy lusts for his sister and his young daughter a puppet manipulated by the Arpinate dollmaster in Gaul-across-the-Alps a cockroach out of Rome's vilest stew a pimp a pansy a pornographer the creature on the end of every verpa in town! What does he know of Rome, what does his peasant dollmaster from Arpinum know of Rome? Rome is exclusive! Rome cannot be tossed to the world like shit to sewers, like spit to gutters! Are we to endure the dilution of our race through hybrid unions with the raggle-taggle women of half a hundred nations? Are we in the future to journey to places far from Rome and have our Roman ears defiled by a bastard Latin argot? Let them speak Greek, I say! Let them worship Serapis of the Scrotum or Astarte of the Anus! What does that matter to us? But we are to give them Quirinus? Who are the Quirites, the children of Quirinus? We are! For who is this Quirinus? Only a Roman can know! Quirinus is the spirit of the Roman citizenship; Quirinus is the god of the assembly of Roman men; Quirinus is the unconquered god because Rome has never been conquered and never will be conquered, fellow Quirites!" The whole House erupted into screaming cheers; while Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus staggered to his stool and almost fell onto it, men wept, men stamped their feet, men clapped until their hands were numb, men turned to each other with the tears streaming down their faces, and embraced. But so much emotion uncontained spent itself like sea foam on basaltic rock, and when the tears dried and the bodies ceased to shake, the men of the Senate of Rome found themselves with nothing more to give that day, and dragged their leaden feet home to live again in dreams that one magical moment when they actually saw the vision of faceless Quirinus rear up to throw his numinous toga over them as a father over his truehearted and unfailingly loyal sons. The House was nearly empty when Crassus Orator, Quintus Mucius Scaevola, Metellus Numidicus, Catulus Caesar, and Scaurus Princeps Senatus recollected themselves enough to break off their euphoric conversation and think about following in the footsteps of the rest. Lucius Caecilius Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus was still sitting on his stool, back straight, hands folded in his lap as neatly as a well-bred girl's. But his head had fallen forward, chin on chest, the thinning wisps of his greying hair blowing gently in a little breeze through the open doors. "Brother of mine, that was the greatest speech I have ever heard!" cried Metellus Numidicus, putting his hand out to squeeze Dalmaticus's shoulder. Dalmaticus sat on, and did not speak or move; only then did they discover he was dead. "It's fitting," said Crassus Orator. "I'd die a happy man to think I gave my greatest speech on the very threshold of death."
But not the speech of Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus nor the passing of Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus nor all the ire and power of the Senate could prevent the Plebeian Assembly from passing Saturninus's agrarian bill into law. And the tribunician career of Lucius Appuleius Saturninus was off to a resounding start, a curious compound of infamy and adulation. "I love it," said Saturninus to Glaucia over dinner late in the afternoon of the day the agrarian lex Appuleia was voted into law. They often did dine together, and usually at Glaucia's house; Saturninus's wife had never properly recovered from the awful events following Scaurus's denunciation of Saturninus when the quaestor at Ostia. "Yes, I do love it! Just think, Gaius Servilius, I might have had quite a different kind of career if it hadn't been for that nosy old mentula, Scaurus." "The rostra suits you, all right," said Glaucia, eating hot-house grapes. "Maybe there is something shapes our lives after all." Saturninus snorted. "Oh, you mean Quirinus!" "You can sneer if you want. But I maintain that life is a very bizarre business," said Glaucia. "There's more pattern and less chance to it than there is in a game of cottabus." "What, no element of Stoic or Epicure, Gaius Servilius? Neither fatalism nor hedonism? You'd better be careful, or you might confound all the old Greek killjoys who maintain so loudly that we Romans will never produce a philosophy we didn't borrow from them," laughed Saturninus. "Greeks are. Romans do. Take your pick! I never met a man yet who managed to combine both states of being. We're the opposite ends of the alimentary canal, we Greeks and Romans. Romans are the mouth we shove it in. Greeks are the arsehole they shove it out. No disrespect to the Greeks intended, simply a figure of speech," said Glaucia, punctuating his statement by popping grapes into the Roman end of the alimentary canal. "Since one end has no job to do without the contributions of the other, we'd better stick together," said Saturninus. Glaucia grinned. "There speaks a Roman!" he said. "Through and through, despite Metellus Dalmaticus's saying I'm not one. Wasn't that a turnup for the books, the old fellator up and dying so very timely? If the Policy Makers were more enterprising, they might have made an undying example of him. Metellus Dalmaticus the New Quirinus!" Saturninus swirled the lees in his cup and tossed them expertly onto an empty plate; the splatter they made was counted according to the number of arms radiating out of the central mass. "Three," he said, and shivered. "That's the death number." "And where's our Skeptic now?" gibed Glaucia. "Well, it's unusual, only three." Glaucia spat expertly, and destroyed the form of the splash with three grape seeds. "There! Three done in by three!" "We'll both be dead in three years," said Saturninus. "Lucius Appuleius, you're a complete contradiction! You are as white as Lucius Cornelius Sulla, and with far less excuse. Come, it's only a game of cottabus!” said Glaucia, and changed the subject. "I agree, life on the rostra is far more exciting than life as a darling of the Policy Makers. It's a great challenge, politically manipulating the People. A general has his legions. A demagogue has nothing sharper than his tongue." He chuckled. "And wasn't it a pleasure to watch the crowd chase Marcus Baebius from the Forum this morning, when he tried to interpose his veto?" "A sight to cure sore eyes!" grinned Saturninus, the memory banishing ghostly fingers, three or thirty-three. "By the way," said Glaucia with another abrupt change of subject, "have you heard the latest rumor in the Forum?" "That Quintus Servilius Caepio stole the Gold of Tolosa himself, you mean?" asked Saturninus. Glaucia looked disappointed. "Dis take you, I thought I'd got in first!" "I had it in a letter from Manius Aquillius," Saturninus said. "When Gaius Marius is too busy, Aquillius writes to me instead. And I confess I don't repine, since he's a far better man of letters than the Great Man." "From Gaul-across-the-Alps? How do they know?" "That's where the rumor began. Gaius Marius has acquired a prisoner. The King of Tolosa, no less. And he alleges that Caepio stole the gold all fifteen thousand talents of it." Glaucia whistled. "Fifteen thousand talents! Mazes the mind, doesn't it? A bit much, though I mean, everyone understands that a governor is entitled to his perquisites, but more gold than there is in the Treasury? A trifle excessive, surely!" "True, true. However, the rumor will work very well for Gaius Norbanus when he brings his case against Caepio, won't it? The story of the gold will be around the whole city in less time than it takes Metella Calva to lift her dress for a lusty gang of navvies." "I like your metaphor!" said Glaucia. And suddenly he looked very brisk. "Enough of this idle chatter! You and I have work to do on treason bills and the like. We can't afford to let anything go unnoticed." The work Saturninus and Glaucia did on treason bills and the like was as carefully planned and co-ordinated as any grand military strategy. They intended to remove treason trials from the province of the Centuries and the impossible sequence of dead ends and stone walls this entailed; after which, they intended to remove extortion and bribery trials from the control of the Senate by replacing the senatorial juries with juries composed entirely of knights. "First, we have to see Norbanus convict Caepio in the Plebeian Assembly on some permissible charge as long as the charge isn't worded to say treason, we can do that right now, with popular feeling running so high against Caepio because of the stolen gold," said Saturninus. "It's never worked before in the Plebeian Assembly," said Glaucia dubiously. "Our hot-headed friend Ahenobarbus tried it when he charged Silanus with illegally causing a war against the Germans no mention of treason there! But the Plebeian Assembly still threw the case out. The problem is that no one likes treason trials." "Well, we keep working on it," said Saturninus. "In order to get a conviction out of the Centuries, the accused has to stand there and say out of his own mouth that he deliberately connived at ruining his country. And no one is fool enough to say that. Gaius Marius is right. We have to clip the wings of the Policy Makers by showing them that they're not above either moral reproach or the law. And we can only do that in a body of men who are not senators." "Why not pass your new treason law at once, then try Caepio in its special court?" asked Glaucia. "Yes, yes, I know the senators will squeal like trapped pigs don't they always?" Saturninus grimaced. "We want to live, don't we? Even if we do only have three more years, that's better than dying the day after tomorrow!" "You and your three years!" "Look," Saturninus persevered, "if we can actually get Caepio convicted in the Plebeian Assembly, the Senate will take the hint we're aiming to give it that the People are fed up with senators sheltering fellow senators from just retribution. That there's not one law for senators and another for everybody else. It's time the People woke up! And I'm the boy to administer the whack that will wake them up. Since this Republic began, the Senate has gulled the People into believing that senators are a better breed of Roman, entitled to do and say whatever they want. Vote for Lucius Tiddlypuss his family gave Rome her first consul! And does it matter that Lucius Tiddlypuss is a self-seeking gold-hungry incompetent? No! Lucius Tiddlypuss has the family name, and the family tradition of service in Rome's public sphere. The Brothers Gracchi were right. Take the courts away from the Lucius Tiddlypuss cohort by giving them to the knights!" Glaucia was looking thoughtful. "Something has just occurred to me, Lucius Appuleius. The People are at least a responsible and well-educated lot. Pillars of Roman tradition. But what if one day someone starts talking about the Head Count the way you're talking about the People?" Saturninus laughed. "As long as their bellies are full, and the aediles put on a good show at the games, the Head Count are happy. To make the Head Count politically conscious, you'd have to turn the Forum Romanum into the Circus Maximus!" "Their bellies aren't quite as full as they ought to be this winter," said Glaucia. "Full enough, thanks to none other than our revered Leader of the House, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus himself. You know, I don't mourn the fact that we'll never persuade Numidicus or Catulus Caesar to see things our way, but I can't help thinking it a pity we'll never win Scaurus over," said Saturninus. Glaucia was gazing at him curiously. "You never have held it against Scaurus for throwing you out of the House, have you?" "No. He did what he thought was right. But one day, Gaius Servilius, I'll find out who the real culprits were, and then they'll wish they had as easy a time of it as Oedipus!'' said Saturninus savagely.
* * *
Early in January the tribune of the plebs Gaius Norbanus arraigned Quintus Servilius Caepio in the Plebeian Assembly on a charge that was phrased as "the loss of his army." Feelings ran high from the very beginning, for by no means all of the People were opposed to senatorial exclusivity, and the Senate was there in its full plebeian numbers to fight for Caepio. Long before the tribes were called upon to vote, violence flared and blood flowed. The tribunes of the plebs Titus Didius and Lucius Aurelius Cotta stepped forward to veto the whole procedure, and were hauled down from the rostra by a furious crowd. Stones flew viciously, clubs cracked around ribs and legs; Didius and Lucius Cotta were manhandled out of the Comitia well and literally forced by the pressure of the throng into the Argiletum, then kept there. Bruised and shocked though they were, they tried screaming their vetos across a sea of angry faces, but were shouted down again and again. The rumor about the Gold of Tolosa had tipped the balance against Caepio and the Senate, there could be no doubt of it; from Head Count clear to First Class, the whole city shrieked imprecations at Caepio the thief, Caepio the traitor, Caepio the self-seeker. People women included who had never evinced any kind of interest in Forum or Assembly events came to see this man Caepio, a criminal on a scale hitherto unimaginable; there were debates about how high the mountain of gold bricks must have been, how heavy, how many. And the hatred was a tangible presence, for no one likes to see a single individual make off with money deemed the property of everyone. Especially so much money. Determined the trial would proceed, Norbanus ignored the peripheral turmoil, the brawls, the chaos when habitual Assembly attenders impinged upon the crowds who had come solely to see and abuse Caepio, standing on the rostra amid a guard of lictors deputed to protect him, not detain him. The senators whose patrician rank meant they could not participate in the Plebeian Assembly were clustered on the Curia Hostilia steps hectoring Norbanus, until a segment of the crowd began to pelt them with stones. Scaurus fell, inanimate, bleeding from a wound on his head. Which didn't stop Norbanus, who continued the trial without even pausing to discover whether the Princeps Senatus was dead or merely unconscious. The voting when it came was very fast; the first eighteen of the thirty-five tribes all condemned Quintus Servilius Caepio, which meant no more tribes were called upon to vote. Emboldened by this unprecedented indication of the degree of hatred felt for Caepio, Norbanus then asked the Plebeian Assembly to impose a specific sentence by vote a sentence so harsh that every senator present howled a futile protest. Again the first eighteen tribes chosen by lot all voted the same way, to visit dreadful punishment upon Caepio. He was stripped of his citizenship, forbidden fire and water within eight hundred miles of Rome, fined fifteen thousand talents of gold, and ordered confined in the cells of the Lautumiae under guard and without speech with anyone, even the members of his own family, until his journey into exile began. Amid shaking fists and triumphant yells that he was not going to get the chance to see his brokers or his bankers and bury his personal fortune, Quintus Servilius Caepio, ex-citizen of Rome, was marched between his guard of lictors across the short distance between the well of the Comitia and the tumbledown cells of the Lautumiae. Thoroughly satisfied with the final events of what had been a deliciously exciting and unusual day, the crowds went home, leaving the Forum Romanum to the tenure of a few men, all senatorial in rank. The ten tribunes of the plebs were standing in polarized groups: Lucius Cotta, Titus Didius, Marcus Baebius, and Lucius Antistius Reginus huddled gloomily together, the four middlemen looked helplessly from their left to their right, and an elated Gaius Norbanus and Lucius Appuleius Saturninus talked with great animation and much laughter to Gaius Servilius Glaucia, who had strolled over to congratulate them. Not one of the ten tribunes of the plebs still wore his toga, torn away in the melee. Marcus Aemilius Scaurus was sitting with his back against the plinth of a statue of Scipio Africanus while Metellus Numidicus and two slaves tried to stanch the blood flowing freely from a cut on his temple; Crassus Orator and his boon companion (and first cousin) Quintus Mucius Scaevola were hovering near Scaurus, looking shaken; the two shocked young men Drusus and Caepio Junior were standing on the Senate steps, shepherded by Drusus's uncle Publius Rutilius Rufus, and by Marcus Aurelius Cotta; and the junior consul, Lucius Aurelius Orestes, not a well man at the best of times, was lying full length in the vestibule being tended by an anxious praetor. Rutilius Rufus and Cotta both moved quickly to support Caepio Junior when he suddenly sagged against the dazed and white-faced Drusus, who had one arm about his shoulders. "What can we do to help?" asked Cotta. Drusus shook his head, too moved to speak, while Caepio Junior seemed not to hear. "Did anyone think to send lictors to guard Quintus Servilius's house from the crowds?" asked Rutilius Rufus. "I did," Drusus managed to say. "The boy's wife?" asked Cotta, nodding at Caepio Junior. "I've had her and the baby sent to my house," Drusus said, lifting his free hand to his cheek as if to discover whether he actually existed. Caepio Junior stirred, looking at the three around him in wonder. "It was only the gold," he said. "All they cared about was the gold! They didn't even think of Arausio. They didn't condemn him for Arausio. All they cared about was the gold!" "It is human nature," said Rutilius Rufus gently, "to care more about gold than about men's lives." Drusus glanced at his uncle sharply, but if Rutilius Rufus had spoken in irony, Caepio Junior didn't notice. "I blame Gaius Marius for this," said Caepio Junior. Rutilius Rufus put his hand under Caepio Junior's elbow. "Come, young Quintus Servilius, Marcus Aurelius and I will take you to young Marcus Livius's house." As they moved off the Senate steps, Lucius Antistius Reginus broke away from Lucius Cotta, Didius, and Baebius. He strode across to confront Norbanus, who backed away and took up a stance of aggressive self-defense. "Oh, don't bother!" spat Antistius. "I wouldn't soil my hands with the likes of you, you cur!" He drew himself up, a big man with obvious Celt in him. "I'm going to the Lautumiae to free Quintus Servilius. No man in the history of our Republic has ever been thrown into prison to await exile, and I will not let Quintus Servilius become the first! You can try to stop me if you like, but I've sent home for my sword, and by living Jupiter, Gaius Norbanus, if you try to stop me, I'll kill you!" Norbanus laughed. "Oh, take him!" he said. "Take Quintus Servilius home with you and wipe his eyes not to mention his arse! I wouldn't go near his house, though, if I were you!" "Make sure you charge him plenty!" Saturninus called in the wake of Antistius's diminishing figure. "He can afford to pay in gold, you know!" Antistius swung round and flipped up the fingers of his right hand in an unmistakable gesture. "Oh, I will not! "yelled Glaucia, laughing. "Just because you're a queen doesn't mean the rest of us are!" Gaius Norbanus lost interest. "Come on," he said to Glaucia and Saturninus, "let's go home and eat dinner." Though he was feeling very sick, Scaurus would sooner have died than demean himself by vomiting in public, so he forced his churning mind to dwell upon the three men walking away, laughing, animated, victorious. "They're werewolves," he said to Metellus Numidicus, whose toga was stained with Scaurus's blood. "Look at them! Gaius Marius's tools!" "Can you stand yet, Marcus Aemilius?" Numidicus asked. "Not until I'm feeling surer of my stomach." "I see Publius Rutilius and Marcus Aurelius have taken Quintus Servilius's two young men home," said Numidicus. "Good. They'll need someone to keep an eye on them. I've never seen a crowd so out for noble blood, even in the worst days of Gaius Gracchus," said Scaurus, drawing deep breaths. "We will have to go very quietly for a while, Quintus Caecilius. If we push, those werewolves will push us harder." "Rot Quintus Servilius and the gold!" snapped Numidicus. Feeling better, Scaurus allowed himself to be helped to his feet. "So you think he took it, eh?" Metellus Numidicus looked scornful. "Oh, come, don't try to hoodwink me, Marcus Aemilius!" he said. "You know him as well as I do. Of course he took it! And I'll never forgive him for taking it. It belonged to the Treasury.'' "The trouble is," said Scaurus as he began to walk on what felt like a series of very uneven clouds, "that we have no internal system whereby men like you and me can punish those among our own who betray us." Metellus Numidicus shrugged. "There can be no such system, you are aware of that. To institute one would be to admit that our own men do sometimes fall short of what they should be. And if we show our weaknesses to the world, we're finished." "I'd rather be dead than finished," said Scaurus. "And I." Metellus Numidicus sighed. "I just hope our sons feel as strongly as we do." "That," said Scaurus wryly, "was an unkind thing to say." "Marcus Aemilius, Marcus Aemilius! Your boy is very young! I can't see anything very wrong with him, truly." "Then shall we exchange sons?" "No," said Metellus Numidicus, "if for no other reason than that the gesture would kill your son. His worst handicap is that he knows very well he lives under your disapproval.'' "He's a weakling," said Scaurus the strong. "Perhaps a good wife might help," said Numidicus. Scaurus stopped and turned to face his friend. "Now that's a thought! I hadn't earmarked him for anyone yet, he's so grossly immature. Have you someone in mind?" "My niece. Dalmaticus's girl, Metella Dalmatica. She'll be eighteen in about two years. I'm her guardian now that dear Dalmaticus is dead. What do you say, Marcus Aemilius?" "It's a deal, Quintus Caecilius! A deal!"
Drusus had sent his steward Cratippus and every physically fit slave he owned to the Servilius Caepio house the moment he realized that Caepio the father was going to be convicted. Unsettled by the trial and the very little she had managed to overhear of conversation between Caepio Junior and Caepio the father, Livia Drusa had gone to work at her loom for want of something else to do; no book could keep her enthralled, even the love poetry of the spicy Meleager. Not expecting an invasion by her brother's servants, she took alarm from the expression of controlled panic on Cratippus's face. "Quick, dominilla, get together anything you want to take away with you!" he said, glancing around her sitting room. "I have your maid packing your clothes, and your nanny taking care of the baby's needs, so all you have to do is show me what you want to bring away for yourself books, papers, fabrics." Eyes enormous, she stared at the steward. "What is it? What's the matter?" "Your father-in-law, dominilla. Marcus Livius says the court is going to convict him," said Cratippus. "But why should that mean I have to leave?" she asked, terrified at the thought of going back to live in the prison of her brother's house now that she had discovered freedom. "The city is out for his blood, dominilla." What color she still retained now fled. "His blood! Are they going to kill him?" "No, no, nothing quite as bad as that," Cratippus soothed. "They'll confiscate his property. But the crowd is so angry that your brother thinks it likely when the trial is over that many of the most vengeful may come straight here to loot." Within an hour Quintus Servilius Caepio's house was devoid of servants and family, its outer gates bolted and barred; as Cratippus led Livia Drusa away down the Clivus Palatinus, a big squad of lictors came marching up it, clad only in tunics and bearing clubs instead of fasces. They were going to take up duty outside the house and keep any irate crowds at bay, for the State wanted Caepio's property intact until it could be catalogued and auctioned. Servilia Caepionis was there at Drusus's door to bring her sister-in-law inside, her face as pale as Livia Drusa's. "Come and look," she said, hurrying Livia Drusa through peristyle-garden and house, guiding her out to the loggia, which overlooked the Forum Romanum. And there it was, the end of the trial of Quintus Servilius Caepio. The milling throng was sorting itself out into tribes to vote about the sentence of far-away exile and huge damages, a curious swaying series of surging lines which were orderly enough in the well of the Comitia, but became chaotic where the huge crowds of onlookers fused into them. Knots indicated fights in progress, eddies revealed where the fights had begun to escalate into something approaching riot nuclei; on the Senate steps many men were clustered, and on the rostra at the edge of the well of the Comitia stood the tribunes of the plebs and a small, lictor-hedged figure Livia Drusa presumed was her father-in-law, the accused. Servilia Caepionis had begun to weep; too numb yet to feel like crying, Livia Drusa moved closer to her. "Cratippus said the crowd might go to Father's house to loot it," she said. "I didn't know! Nobody told me anything!" Dragging out her handkerchief, Servilia Caepionis dried her tears. "Marcus Livius has feared it all along," she said. "It's that wretched story about the Gold of Tolosa! Had it not got around, things would have been different. But most of Rome seems to have judged Father before his trial and for something he's not even on trial for!" Livia Drusa turned away. "I must see where Cratippus has put my baby." That remark provoked a fresh flood of tears in Servilia Caepionis, who so far had not managed to become pregnant, though she wanted a baby desperately. "Why haven't I conceived?" she asked Livia Drusa. "You're so lucky! Marcus Livius says you're going to have a second baby, and I haven't even managed to start my first one!" "There's plenty of time," Livia Drusa comforted. "They were away for months after we were married, don't forget, and Marcus Livius is much busier than my Quintus Servilius. It's commonly said that the busier the husband is, the harder his wife finds it to conceive." "No, I'm barren," Servilia Caepionis whispered. "I know I'm barren; I can feel it in my bones! And Marcus Livius is so kind, so forgiving!" She broke down again. "There, there, don't fret about it so," said Livia Drusa, who had managed to get her sister-in-law as far as the atrium, where she looked about her for help. "You won't make it any easier to conceive by becoming distraught, you know. Babies like to burrow into placid wombs." Cratippus appeared. "Oh, thank the gods!" cried Livia Drusa. "Cratippus, fetch my sister's maid, would you? And perhaps you could show me whereabouts I am to sleep, and whereabouts little Servilia is?" In such an enormous house, the accommodation of several additional important people was not a problem; Cratippus had given Caepio Junior and his wife one of the suites of rooms opening off the peristyle-garden, and Caepio the father another, while baby Servilia had been located in the vacant nursery along the far colonnade. "What shall I do about dinner?" the steward came to ask Livia Drusa as she began to direct the unpacking. "That's up to my sister, Cratippus, surely! I'd much rather not do anything to usurp her authority." "She's lying down in some distress, dominilla." "Oh, I see. Well, best have dinner ready in an hour the men might want to eat. But be prepared to postpone it." There was a stir outside in the garden; Livia Drusa went out to see, and found her brother Drusus supporting Caepio Junior along the colonnade. "What is it?" she asked. "How may I help?" She looked at Drusus. "What is it?" she repeated. "Quintus Servilius our father-in-law is condemned. Exile no closer than eight hundred miles from Rome, a fine of fifteen thousand talents of gold which means confiscation of every lamp wick and dead leaf the whole of his family owns and imprisonment in the Lautumiae until Quintus Servilius can be deported," said Drusus. "But everything Father owns won't amount to a hundred talents of gold!" said Livia Drusa, aghast. “Of course. So he'll never be able to come home again.'' Servilia Caepionis came running, looking, thought Livia Drusa, like Cassandra flying from the conquering Greeks, hair wild, eyes huge and blurred with tears, mouth agape. "What is it, what is it?" she cried, Drusus coped with her firmly but kindly, dried her tears, forbade her to cast herself on her brother's chest. And under this treatment she calmed with magical swiftness. "Come, let's all go to your study, Marcus Livius," she said, and actually led the way. Livia Drusa hung back, terrified. "What's the matter with you?" asked Servilia Caepionis. "We can't sit in the study with the men!" “Of course we can!'' said Servilia Caepionis impatiently. "This is no time to keep the women of the family in ignorance, as Marcus Livius well knows. We stand together, or we fall together. A strong man must have strong women around him." Head spinning, Livia Drusa tried to assimilate all the mood twists of the previous moments, and understood at last what a mouse she had been all her life. Drusus had expected a wildly disturbed wife to greet him, but then expected her to calm down and become extremely practical and supportive; and Servilia Caepionis had behaved exactly as he expected. So Livia Drusa followed Servilia Caepionis and the men into the study, and managed not to look horrified when Servilia Caepionis poured unwatered wine for the whole company. Sitting sipping the first undiluted liquor she had ever tasted, Livia Drusa hid her storm of thoughts. And her anger. At the end of the tenth hour Lucius Antistius Reginus brought Quintus Servilius Caepio to Drusus's house. Caepio looked exhausted, but more annoyed than depressed. "I took him out of the Lautumiae," said Antistius, tight-lipped. "No Roman consular is going to be incarcerated while I'm a tribune of the plebs! It's an affront to Romulus and Quirinus as much as it is to Jupiter Optimus Maximus. How dare they!" "They dared because the People encouraged them, and so did all those neck-craning refugees from the games," said Caepio, downing his wine at a gulp. "More," he said to his son, who leaped to obey, happy now his father was safe. "I'm done for in Rome," he said then, and stared with black snapping eyes first at Drusus, only second at his son. "It is up to you young men from now on to defend the right of my family to enjoy its ancient privileges and its natural pre-eminence. With your last breaths, if necessary. The Mariuses and the Saturninuses and the Norbanuses must be exterminated by the knife if that is the only way, do you understand?" Caepio Junior was nodding obediently, but Drusus sat with his wine goblet in his hand and a rather wooden look on his face. "I swear to you, Father, that our family will never suffer the loss of its dignitas while I am paterfamilias," said Caepio Junior solemnly; he appeared more tranquil now. And, thought Livia Drusa, loathing him, more like his detestable father than ever! Why do I hate him so much? Why did my brother make me marry him? Then her own plight faded, for she saw an expression on Drusus's face which fascinated her, puzzled her. It wasn't that he disagreed with anything their father-in-law said, more as if he qualified it, filed it away inside his mind along with a lot of other things, not all of which made sense to him. And, Livia Drusa decided suddenly, my brother dislikes our father-in-law intensely! Oh, he had changed, had Drusus! Where Caepio Junior would never change, only become more what he had always been. "What do you intend to do, Father?" Drusus asked. A curious smile blossomed on Caepio's face; the irritation died out of his eyes, and was replaced by a most complex meld of triumph, slyness, pain, hatred. "Why, my dear boy, I shall go into exile as directed by the Plebeian Assembly," he said. "But where, Father?" asked Caepio Junior. "Smyrna." "How will we manage for money?" Caepio Junior asked. "Not so much me Marcus Livius will help me out but you yourself. How will you be able to afford to live comfortably in exile?" "I have money on deposit in Smyrna, more than enough for my needs. As for you, my son, there is no need to worry. Your mother left a great fortune, which I have held in trust for you. It will sustain you more than adequately," said Caepio. "But won't it be confiscated?" "No, for two reasons. First of all, it's already in your name, not in mine. And secondly, it's not on deposit in Rome. It's in Smyrna, with my own money." The smile grew. "You must live here in Marcus Livius's house with him for several years, after which I'll begin to send your fortune home. And if anything should happen to me, my bankers will carry on the good work. In the meantime, son-in-law, keep an account of all the monies you expend on my son's behalf. In time he will repay you every last sestertius." A silence fraught with so much energy and emotion it was almost visible fell upon the entire group, while each member of it realized what Quintus Servilius Caepio was not saying; that he had stolen the Gold of Tolosa, that the Gold of Tolosa was in Smyrna, and that the Gold of Tolosa was now the property of Quintus Servilius Caepio, free and clear, safe and sound. That Quintus Servilius Caepio was very nearly as rich as Rome. Caepio turned to Antistius, silent as the rest. "Have you considered what I asked you on the way here?" Antistius cleared his throat loudly. "I have, Quintus Servilius. And I'd like to accept." "Good!" Caepio looked at his son and his son-in-law. "My dear friend Lucius Antistius has agreed to escort me to Smyrna, to give me both the pleasure of his company and the protection of a tribune of the plebs. When we reach Smyrna, I shall endeavor to persuade Lucius Antistius to remain there with me." "I haven't decided about that yet," said Antistius. "There's no hurry, no hurry at all," said Caepio smoothly. He rubbed his hands together as if to warm them. "I do declare, I'm hungry enough to eat a baby! Is there any dinner?" "Of course, Father," said Servilia Caepionis. "If you men go into the dining room, Livia Drusa and I will see to things in the kitchen." That, of course, was a gross inaccuracy; Cratippus saw to things in the kitchen. But the two women did search for him, and finally found him on the loggia squinting down into the Forum Romanum, where the shadows of dusk were growing. "Look at that! Did you ever see such a mess?" the steward asked indignantly, pointing. "Litter every where! Shoes, rags, sticks, half-eaten food, wine flagons it's a disgrace!" And there he was, her red-haired Odysseus, standing with Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus on the balcony of the house below; like Cratippus, the two of them seemed to be waxing in anger about the litter. Livia Drusa shivered, licked her lips, stared in starved anguish at the young man so near to her and yet so far. The steward rushed away toward the kitchen stairs; now was her chance, now while it would seem a casual inquiry. "Sister," she asked, "who is that red-haired man on the terrace with Gnaeus Domitius? He's been visiting there for years, but I don't know who he is, I just can't place him. Do you know? Can you tell me?" Servilia Caepionis snorted. "Oh, him! That's Marcus Porcius Cato," she said, voice ringing contemptuously. "Cato? As in Cato the Censor?" "The same. Upstarts! He's Cato the Censor's grandson." "But wouldn't his grandmother have been Licinia, and his mother Aemilia Paulla? Surely that makes him acceptable!" objected Livia Drusa, eyes shining. Servilia Caepionis snorted again. "Wrong branch, my dear. He's no son of Aemilia Paulla's if he were, he'd have to be years older than he is. No, no! He's not a Cato Licinianus! He's a Cato Salonianus. And the great-grandson of a slave." Livia Drusa's imaginary world shifted, grew a network of tiny cracks. "I don't understand," she said, bewildered. "What, you don't know the story? He's the son of the son of Cato the Censor's second marriage." "To the daughter of a slave?” gasped Livia Drusa. "The daughter of his slave, to be exact. Salonia, her name was. I think it's an absolute disgrace that they're allowed the same license to mingle with us as the descendants of Cato the Censor's first wife, Licinia! They've even wormed their way into the Senate. Of course," Servilia Caepionis said, "the Porcii Catones Liciniani don't speak to them. Nor do we." "Why does Gnaeus Domitius suffer him, then?" Servilia Caepionis laughed, sounding very much like her insufferable father. "Well, the Domitii Ahenobarbi aren't such an illustrious lot, are they? More money than ancestors, in spite of all the tales they tell about Castor and Pollux touching their beards with red! I don't know exactly why he's accepted among them. But I can guess. My father worked it out." "Worked out what?" asked Li via Drusa, heart in her feet. "Well, it's a red-haired family, Cato the Censor's second lot. Cato the Censor was red-haired himself, for that matter. But Licinia and Aemilia Paulla were both dark, so their sons and daughters have brown hair and brown eyes. Whereas Cato the Censor's slave Salonius was a Celtiberian from Salo in Nearer Spain, and he was fair. His daughter Salonia was very fair. And that's why the Catones Saloniani have kept the red hair and the grey eyes." Servilia Caepionis shrugged. "The Domitii Ahenobarbi have to perpetuate the myth they started about the red beards they inherited from the ancestor touched by Castor and Pollux. So they always marry red-haired women. Well, red-haired women are scarce. And if there's no better-born red-haired woman about, I imagine a Domitius Ahenobarbus would marry a Cato Salonianus. They're so stuck up they think their own blood capable of absorbing any old rubbish." "So Gnaeus Domitius's friend must have a sister?" "He has a sister." Servilia Caepionis shook herself. "I must go inside. Oh, what a day! Come, dinner will be there." "You go ahead," said Livia Drusa. "I'll have to feed my daughter before I feed myself.'' Mention of the baby was enough to send poor child-hungry Servilia Caepionis hurrying off; Livia Drusa returned to the balustrade and looked over it. Yes, they were still there, Gnaeus Domitius and his visitor. His visitor with a slave for a great-grandfather. Perhaps the burgeoning gloom was responsible for the dimming of the hair on the man below, for the diminishing of his height, the width of his shoulders. His neck now looked slightly ridiculous, too long and skinny to be really Roman. Four tears dropped to star the yellow-painted railing, but no more. I have been a fool as usual, thought Livia Drusa. I have dreamed and mooned for four whole years over a man who turns out to be the recent descendant of a slave a fact-slave, not a myth-slave. I confabulated him into a king, noble and brave as Odysseus. I made myself into patient Penelope, waiting for him. And now I find out he's not noble. Not even decently born! After all, who was Cato the Censor but a peasant from Tusculum befriended by a patrician Valerius Flaccus? A genuine harbinger of Gaius Marius. That man on the terrace below is the recent descendant of a Spanish slave and a Tusculan peasant. What a fool I am! What a stupid, stupid idiot! When she reached the nursery she found little Servilia thriving and hungry, so she sat for fifteen minutes and fed the small one, whose regular routine had been thrown out of kilter this momentous day. "You'd better find her a wet nurse," she said to the Macedonian nanny as she prepared to leave. "I'd like a few months of rest before I bear again. And when this new baby comes, you can get in wet nurses from the start. Feeding a child oneself obviously doesn't prevent conception, or I wouldn't be pregnant right now." She slipped into the dining room just as the main courses were being served, and sat down as inconspicuously as she could on a straight chair opposite Caepio Junior. Everyone seemed to be making a good meal; Livia Drusa discovered she too was hungry. "Are you all right, Livia Drusa?" asked Caepio Junior, a trifle anxiously. "You look sort of sick." Startled, she stared at him, and for the first time in all the many years she had known him, the sight of him did not arouse all those inchoate feelings of revulsion. No, he did not have red hair; no, he did not have grey eyes; no, he was not tall and graceful and broad-shouldered; no, he would never turn into King Odysseus. But he was her husband; he had loved her faithfully; he was the father of her children; and he was a patrician Roman nobleman on both sides. So she smiled at him, a smile which reached her eyes. "I think it's only the day, Quintus Servilius," she said gently. "In myself, I feel better than I have in years."
Encouraged by the result of the trial of Caepio, Saturninus began to act with an arbitrary arrogance that rocked the Senate to its foundations. Hard on the heels of Caepio's trial, Saturninus himself prosecuted Gnaeus Mallius Maximus for "loss of his army" in the Plebeian Assembly, with a similar result: Mallius Maximus, already deprived of his sons by the battle of Arausio, was now deprived of his Roman citizenship and all his property, and sent into exile a more broken man by far than the gold-greedy Caepio. Then late in February came the new treason law, the lex Appuleia de maiestate, which took treason trials off the cumbersome Centuries and put them into a special court staffed entirely by knights. The Senate was to have no part in this court at all. In spite of which, the senators said little derogatory about the bill during their obligatory debate, nor attempted to oppose its passage into law. Monumental though these changes were, and of an unimaginable importance to the future government of Rome, they could not capture the interest of Senate or People the way the pontifical election held at the same time did. The death of Lucius Caecilius Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus had left not one, but two vacancies in the College of Pontifices; and yet, since these two vacancies were held by one and the same man, there were those who argued only one election was necessary. But, as Scaurus Princeps Senatus pointed out, voice wobbling dangerously, mouth quivering, that would only be possible if the man who was elected ordinary pontifex was also a candidate for the big job. Finally it was agreed that the Pontifex Maximus would be elected first. "Then we shall see what we shall see," said Scaurus, taking deep breaths, and only once hooting with laughter. Both Scaurus Princeps Senatus and Metellus Numidicus had put their names up as candidates for Pontifex Maximus, as had Catulus Caesar. And Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus. "If I am elected, or Quintus Lutatius is elected, then we must hold a second poll for the ordinary pontifex, as we are both already in the college," said Scaurus, voice control heroic. Among this field were a Servilius Vatia, an Aelius Tubero, and Metellus Numidicus. And Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus. The new law stipulated that seventeen of the thirty-five tribes be chosen by casting the lots, and that they alone vote. So the lots were cast, and the seventeen tribes which would vote determined. All this was done in a spirit of high good humor and great tolerance; no violence in the Forum Romanum that day! For many more than Scaurus Princeps Senatus were enjoying a wonderful chuckle. Nothing appealed to the Roman sense of humor more than a squabble involving the most august names on the censors' rolls, especially when the aggrieved party had managed so neatly to turn the tables on those who had caused the grievance. Naturally Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus was the hero of the hour. So no one was very surprised when Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus was elected Pontifex Maximus, and thereby made a second election unnecessary. Amid cheers and flying ropes of flowers, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus scored the perfect revenge on those who had given his dead father's priesthood to young Marcus Livius Drusus. Scaurus rolled about in paroxysms of laughter the moment the verdict came in much to the disgust of Metellus Numidicus, who couldn't see the funny side at all. "Really, Marcus Aemilius, you are the limit! It's an outrage!" he bleated. "That bad-tempered and dirty-livered pipinna as Pontifex Maximus? After my dear brother, Dalmaticus? And versus you? Or me?" He pounded his fist against one of the Volscian ship's beaks which had given the rostra its name. "Oh, if there is any time when I detest Romans, it's when their perverted sense of the ridiculous overcomes their normal sense of fitness! I can forgive the passage of a Saturninus law easier than I can forgive this! At least in a Saturninus law, people's deep-rooted opinions are involved. But this this farce? Sheer irresponsibility! I feel like joining Quintus Servilius in his exile, I'm so ashamed." But the greater the fury Metellus Numidicus worked himself into, the harder Scaurus laughed. Finally, clutching his sides and looking at Metellus Numidicus through a curtain of tears, he managed to gasp, "Oh, stop behaving like an old Vestal confronted by a pair of hairy balls and a stiff prick! It is hilarious! And we deserve everything he's dished out to us!" Off he went again into a fresh convulsion; emitting a noise like a squeezed kitten, Metellus Numidicus stalked off.
Said Gaius Marius in a rare letter to Publius Rutilius Rufus, which its recipient got in September:
I know I ought to write more often, old friend, but the trouble is, I'm not a comfortable correspondent. Now your letters are like a piece of cork thrown to a drowning man, full of yourself as you are no frills, no fringes, no formality. There! I managed a little bit of style, but at what price you wouldn't believe. No doubt you've been going to the Senate to endure our Piggle-wiggle oink-oinking against the cost to the State of keeping up a Head Count army through a second year of inertia on the far side of the Alps? And how am I going to get myself elected to a fourth term as consul, for the third time in a row? That of course is what I have to do. Otherwise I lose everything I stand to gain. Because next year, Publius Rutilius, is going to be the year of the Germans. I know it in my bones. Yes, I admit I have no real basis yet for this feeling, but when Lucius Cornelius and Quintus Sertorius return, I am sure that is what they're going to say. I haven't heard from either of them since they came last year to bring me King Copillus. And though I'm glad my two tribunes of the plebs managed to convict Quintus Servilius Caepio, I'm still rather sorry I didn't have the chance to do the job myself, with Copillus testifying. Never mind. Quintus Servilius got his just reward. A pity however that Rome will never lay eyes on the Gold of Tolosa. It would have paid for many a Head Count army. Life goes on here much as always. The Via Domitia is now in mint condition all the way from Nemausus to Ocelum, which will make it a great deal easier for legions on the march in the future. It had been let go to ruin. Parts of it had not been touched since our new Pontifex Maximus's tata was through here nearly twenty years ago. Floods and frosts and the runoff from sudden cloudbursts had taken an awful toll. Of course it's not like building a new road. Once the stones are fitted into place in the roadbed, the base is there forever. But you can't expect men to march and wagons to roll and hooves to trot safely across the ups and downs of outsized cobbles, now can you? The top surface of sand and gravel and quarry dust has to be kept as smooth as an egg, and watered until it packs down like concrete. Take it from me, the Via Domitia at the moment is a credit to my men. We also built a new causeway across the Rhodanus marshes all the way from Nemausus to Arelate, by the way. And we've just about finished digging a new ship canal from the sea to Arelate, to bypass the swamps and mud flats and sandbars of the natural waterway. All the big Greek fish in Massilia are groveling with their noses pressed against my arse in thanks slimy gang of hypocrites they are! Gratitude hasn't caused any price cuts in whatever they sell my army, I note! In case you should come to hear of it and the story gets distorted as stories about me and mine always seem to I will tell you what happened with Gaius Lusius. You remember, my sister-in-law's sister's boy? Came to me as a tribune of the soldiers. Only it turned out that wasn't what he wanted to be of the soldiers. My provost marshal came to me two weeks ago with what he thought was going to be a very bad piece of personal news. Gaius Lusius had been found dead down in the rankers' barracks, split from gizzard to breadbasket by the neatest bit of sword work any commander could ask for from a ranker. The guilty soldier had given himself up nice young chap too finest type, his centurion told me. Turns out Lusius was a pansy and took a fancy to this soldier. And he kept on pestering, wouldn't let up. Then it became a joke in the century, with everyone mincing around flapping their hands and fluttering their eyelashes. The poor young ranker couldn't win. Result murder. Anyway, I had to court-martial the soldier, and I must say it gave me great pleasure to acquit him with praise, a promotion, and a purse full of money. There. Did it again, got in a bit of literary style. The business turned out well for me too. I was able to prove that Lusius wasn't a blood relation, first off. And in close second place, it was a chance for me to show the rankers that their general sees justice done as justice should be done, no favoritism for members of the family. I suppose there must be jobs a pansy can do, but the legions are no place for him, that's definite, eh, Publius Rutilius? Can you imagine what we'd have done to Lusius at Numantia? He wouldn't have got off with a nice clean death; he'd have been singing soprano. Though you grow up eventually. I'll never forget what a shock I got listening to some of the things that were said about Scipio Aemilianus at his funeral! Well, he never put the hard word on me, so I still don't know. Odd fellow, but I think these stories get around when men don't sire children. And that's about it. Oh, except I made a few changes in the pilum this year, and I expect my new version will become standard issue. If you've got any spare cash, go out and buy some shares in one of the new factories bound to spring up to make them. Or found a factory yourself as long as you own the building, the censors can't accuse you of unsenatorial practices, can they, now? Anyway, what I did was change the design of the junction between the iron shaft and the wooden shaft. The pilum is such an efficient piece of work compared to the old hasta-type spear, but there's no doubt they're a lot more expensive to make little properly barbed head instead of big leafy head, long iron shaft, and then a wooden shaft shaped to suit the throwing action instead of the old hasta broom handle. I've noticed over the years that the Enemy love to get their fingers on a pilum, so they deliberately provoke our green troops into throwing when there's no chance of hitting anything other than an Enemy shield. Then they either keep the pilum for another day, or they throw it back at us. What I did was work out a way of joining the iron shaft to the wooden shaft with a weak pin. The minute the pilum hits anything, the shafts break apart where they join, so the Enemy can't throw them back at us, or make off with them. What's more, if we retain the field at the end of a battle, the armorers can go round and pick up all the broken bits, and fix them together again. Saves us money because it saves us losing them, and saves us lives because they can't be thrown back at us by the Enemy. And that's definitely all the news. Write soon.
Publius Rutilius Rufus laid the letter down with a smile. Not too grammatical, not too graceful, not at all stylish. But then, that was Gaius Marius. He too was like his letters. This obsession about the consulship was worrying, however. On the one hand he could understand why Marius wanted to remain consul until the Germans were defeated Marius knew no one else could defeat the Germans. On the other hand, Rutilius Rufus was too much a Roman of his class to approve, even taking the Germans into account. Was a Rome so altered by Marian political innovations it was no longer the Rome of Romulus really worth it? Rutilius Rufus wished he knew. It was very difficult to love a man the way he loved Marius, yet live with the trail of blasted traditions he left in his wake. The pilum, for Juno's sake! Could he leave nothing the way he found it? Still, Publius Rutilius Rufus sat down and replied to the letter at once. Because he did love Gaius Marius.
This being a rather sluggish kind of summer, I'm afraid I haven't a great deal to report, dear Gaius Marius. Nothing of moment, anyway. Your esteemed colleague Lucius Aurelius Orestes, the junior consul, isn't well, but then, he wasn't well when he was elected. I don't understand why he stood, except I suppose he felt he deserved the office. It remains to be seen whether the office has deserved him. Somehow I doubt the latter. A couple of juicy scandals are about all the news, but I know you'll enjoy them as much as I did. Interestingly enough, both involve your tribune of the plebs, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus. An extraordinary fellow, you know. A mass of contradictions. Such a pity, I always think, that Scaurus singled him out like that. Saturninus entered the Senate, I am sure, with the avowed intention of becoming the first Appuleius to sit in the consul's chair. Now he burns to tear the Senate down to the point where the consuls are no more effective than a wax mask. Yes, yes, I can hear you saying I'm being unduly pessimistic, and I'm exaggerating, and my view of things is warped by my love of the old ways. But I'm right, all the same! You will excuse me, I hope, that I refer to everyone by cognomen only. This is going to be a long letter, and I'll save a few words that way. Saturninus has been vindicated. What do you think about that? An amazing business, and one which has redounded very much to the credit of our venerated Princeps Senatus, Scaurus. You must admit he's a far finer man than his boon companion, Piggle-wiggle. But then, that's the difference between an Aemilius and a Caecilius. You know I know you know because I told you that Scaurus has continued in his role as curator of the grain supply, and spends his time shuttling between Ostia and Rome, making life thoroughly miserable for the grain lords, who can get away with nothing. We have only one person to thank for the remarkable stability of grain prices these last two harvests, in spite of the shortages. Scaurus! Yes, yes, I'll cease the panegyric and get on with the story. It seems that when Scaurus was down in Ostia about two months ago, he ran into a grain-buying agent normally stationed in Sicily. There's no need to fill you in on the slave revolt there, since you get the Senate's dispatches regularly, except to say that I do think we sent the right man to Sicily as governor this year. He might be a pokered-up aristocrat with a mouth like a cat's arsehole, but Lucius Licinius Lucullus is as punctilious over matters like his reports to the House as he is in tidying up his battlefields. Would you believe, incidentally, that an idiot praetor one of the more dubiously antecedented (isn't that a good phrase?) plebeian Servilians who managed to buy himself election as an augur on the strength of his patron Ahenobarbus's money and now calls himself Gaius Servilius Augur, if you please! actually had the gall the other day to stand up in the House and accuse Lucullus of deliberately prolonging the war in Sicily to ensure that his command is prorogued into next year? On what grounds did he make this astonishing charge? I hear you ask. Why, because after Lucullus defeated the slave army so decisively, he didn't rush off to storm Triocala, leaving thirty-five thousand dead slaves on the field and all the pockets of servile resistance in the area of Heracleia Minoa to grow into fresh sores in our Roman hide! Lucullus did the job properly. Having defeated the slaves in battle, he then took a week to dispose of the dead, and flush out those pockets of servile resistance, before he moved on to Triocala, where the slaves who survived the battle had gone to earth. But Servilius the Augur says Lucullus should have flown like the birds of the sky straight to Triocala from the battle, for alleges Servilius the Augur the slaves who did go to earth in Triocala were in such a state of panic that they would have surrendered to him immediately! Where, as things turned out in the real world, by the time that Lucullus did get to Triocala, the slaves had got over their panic and decided to keep on fighting. Now from whom does Servilius the Augur get his information, you ask? Why, from his auguries, naturally! How else could he know what sort of state of mind a crowd of rebel slaves shut inside an impregnable fortress were in? And did you ever find Lucullus sufficiently devious to fight a huge battle, then work out a plan whereby he ensured that his term as governor was prorogued? What a mountain of rubbish! Lucullus did as his nature dictated he tidied up alpha before he proceeded to start beta. I was disgusted by Servilius the Augur's speech, and even more disgusted when Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus started roaring out his support for Servilius the Augur's preposterous tissue of completely unsubstantiated allegations! Of course, all the armchair generals on the back benches who wouldn't know one end of a battlefield from the other thought the disgrace was Lucullus's! We shall see what we shall see, but do not be surprised if you hear that the House decides, one, not to prorogue Lucullus, and two, to give the job as governor of Sicily next year to none other than Servilius the Augur. Who only started this treason hunt in order to have himself made next year's governor of Sicily! It's a peachy post for someone as inexperienced and addled as Servilius the Augur, because Lucullus has really done all the work for him. The defeat at Heracleia Minoa has driven what slaves there are left inside a fortress they can't leave because Lucullus has them under siege, Lucullus managed to push enough farmers back onto their land to ensure that there'll be a harvest of some kind this year, and the open countryside of Sicily is no longer being ravaged by the slave army. Enter the new governor Servilius the Augur onto this already settled stage, bowing to right and to left as he collects the accolades. I tell you, Gaius Marius, ambition allied to no talent is the most dangerous thing in the world. Edepol, edepol, that was quite a digression, wasn't it? My indignation at the plight of Lucullus got the better of me. I do feel desperately sorry for him. But on with the tale of Scaurus down at Ostia, and the chance meeting with the grain-buying agent from Sicily. Now when it was thought that one quarter of Sicily's grain slaves would be freed before the harvest of last year, the grain merchants calculated that one quarter of the harvest would remain lying on the ground due to lack of hands to reap the wheat. So no one bothered to buy that last quarter. Until the two-week period during which that rodent Nerva freed eight hundred Italian slaves. And Scaurus's grain-buying agent was one of a group who went around Sicily through those two weeks, frantically buying up the last quarter of the harvest at a ridiculously cheap price. Then the growers bullied Nerva into closing down his emancipation tribunals, and all of a sudden Sicily was given back enough labor to ensure that the complete harvest would be gathered in. So the last quarter, bought for a song from a marketplace beggar, was now in the ownership of a person or persons unknown, and the reason for a massive hiring of every vacant silo between Puteoli and Rome was becoming apparent. The last quarter was to be stored in those silos until the following year, when Rome's insistence that the Italian slaves be freed would indeed have produced a smaller than normal Sicilian harvest. And the price of grain would be high. What those enterprising persons unknown didn't count upon was the slave revolt. Instead of all four quarters of the crop being harvested, none of it was. So the grand scheme to make an enormous profit from the last quarter came to nothing, and those waiting empty silos remained empty. However, to go back to the frantic two weeks during which Nerva freed some Italian slaves and the group of grain buyers scrambled to purchase the last quarter of the crop, the moment this was done and the tribunals were closed, our group of grain buyers was set upon by armed bandits, and every last man was killed. Or so the bandits thought. But one of them, the fellow who talked to Scaurus in Ostia, shammed dead, and so survived. Scaurus sniffed a gigantic rat. What a nose he has! And what a mind! He saw the pattern at once, though the grain buyer had not. And how I do love him, in spite of his hidebound conservatism. Burrowing like a terrier, he discovered that the persons unknown were none other than your esteemed consular colleague of last year, Gaius Flavius Fimbria, and this year's governor of Macedonia, Gaius Memmius! They had laid a false scent for our terrier Scaurus last year that very cleverly led straight to the quaestor of Ostia none other than our turbulent tribune of the plebs Lucius Appuleius Saturninus. Once he had assembled all his evidence, Scaurus got up and apologized to Saturninus twice once in the House, once in the Comitia. He was mortified, but lost no dignitas, of course. All the world loves a sincere and graceful apologist. And I must say that Saturninus never singled Scaurus out when he returned to the House as a tribune of the plebs. Saturninus got up too, once in the House and once in the Comitia, and told Scaurus that he had never borne a grudge because he had understood how very crafty the real villains were, and he was now extremely grateful for the recovery of his reputation. So Saturninus lost no dignitas either. All the world loves a modestly gracious recipient of a handsome apology. Scaurus also offered Saturninus the job of impeaching Fimbria and Memmius in his new treason court, and naturally Saturninus accepted. So now we look forward to lots of sparks and very little obscuring smoke when Fimbria and Memmius are brought to trial. I imagine they will be convicted in a court composed of knights, for many knights in the grain business lost money, and Fimbria and Memmius are being blamed for the whole Sicilian mess. And what it all boils down to is that sometimes the real villains do get their just desserts. The other Saturninus story is a lot funnier, as well as a lot more intriguing. I still haven't worked out what our vindicated tribune of the plebs is up to. About two weeks ago, a fellow turned up in the Forum and climbed up on the rostra it was vacant at the time, there being no Comitial meeting and the amateur orators having decided to take a day off and announced to the whole bottom end of the Forum that his name was Lucius Equitius, that he was a freedman Roman citizen from Firmum Picenum, and now wait for it, Gaius Marius, it's glorious! that he was the natural son of none other than Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus! He had his tale off pat, and it does hang together, as far as it goes. Briefly, it goes like this: his mother was a free Roman woman of good though humble standing, and fell in love with Tiberius Gracchus, who also fell in love with her. But of course her birth wasn't good enough for marriage, so she became his mistress, and lived in a small yet comfortable house on one of Tiberius Gracchus's country estates. In due time Lucius Equitius his mother's name was Equitia was born. Then Tiberius Gracchus was murdered and Equitia died not long after, leaving her small son to the care of Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi. But Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi was not amused at being appointed the guardian of her son's bastard, and put him in the care of a slave couple on her own estates at Misenum. She then had him sold as a slave to people in Firmum Picenum. He didn't know who he was, he says. But if he has done the things he says he has, then he was no infant when his father, Tiberius Gracchus, died, in which case he's lying. Anyway, sold into slavery in Firmum Picenum, he worked so diligently and became so beloved of his owners that when the paterfamilias died, he was not only manumitted, but fell heir to the family fortunes, there being no heirs of the flesh, so to speak. His education was excellent, so he took his inheritance and went into business. Over the next however many years, he served in our legions and made a fortune. To hear him talk, he ought to be about fifty years old, where in actual fact he looks about thirty. And then he met a fellow who made a great fuss about his likeness to Tiberius Gracchus. Now he had always known he was Italian rather than foreign, and he had wondered greatly, he says, about his parentage. Emboldened by the discovery that he looked like Tiberius Gracchus, he traced the slave couple with whom Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi had boarded him for a while, and learned from them the story of his begetting. Isn't it glorious? I haven't made up my mind yet whether it's a Greek tragedy or a Roman farce. Well, of course our gullible sentimental Forum-frequenters went wild, and within a day or two Lucius Equitius was being feted everywhere as Tiberius Gracchus's son. A pity his legitimate sons are all dead, isn't it? Lucius Equitius does, by the way, bear a most remarkable resemblance to Tiberius Gracchus quite uncanny, as a matter of fact. He speaks like him, walks like him, grimaces like him, even picks his nose the same way. I think the thing that puts me off Lucius Equitius the most is that the likeness is too perfect. A twin, not a son. Sons don't resemble their fathers in every detail, I've noticed it time and time again, and there's many a woman brought to bed of a son who is profoundly thankful for that fact, and expends a great deal of her postpartum energy assuring the sprog's tata that the sprog is a dead ringer for her great-uncle Lucius Tiddlypuss. Oh, well! Then the next thing all we old fogies of the Senate know, Saturninus takes this Lucius Equitius up, and starts climbing onto the rostra with him, and encourages Equitius to build a following. Thus, not a week had gone by before Equitius was the hero of everyone in Rome on an income lower than a tribune of the Treasury and higher than the Head Count tradesmen, shopkeepers, artisans, smallholding farmers the flower of the Third and Fourth and Fifth Classes. You know the people I mean. They worshiped the ground the Brothers Gracchi walked on, all those little honest hardworking men who don't often get to vote, but vote in their tribes often enough to feel a distinct cut above freedmen and the Head Count. The sort who are too proud to take charity, yet not rich enough to survive astronomical grain prices. The Conscript Fathers of the Senate, particularly those wearing purple-bordered togas, began to get a bit upset at all this popular adulation and a bit worried too, thanks to the participation of Saturninus, who is the real mystery. Yet what could be done about it? Finally none other than our new Pontifex Maximus, Ahenobarbus (he's got a new nickname and it's sticking pipinna!), proposed that the sister of the Brothers Gracchi (and the widow of Scipio Aemilianus, as if we could ever forget the brawls that particular married couple used to have!) should be brought to the Forum and hied up onto the rostra to confront the alleged imposter. Three days ago it was done, with Saturninus standing off to one side grinning like a fool only he isn't a fool, so what's he up to? and Lucius Equitius gazing blankly at this wizened-up old crab apple of a woman. Ahenobarbus Pipinna struck a maximally pontifical pose, took Sempronia by the shoulders she didn't like that a bit, and shook him off like a hairy-legged spider and asked in tones of thunder, "Daughter of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus Senior and Cornelia Africana, do you recognize this man?" Of course she snapped that she'd never seen him before in her life, and that her dearest, most beloved brother Tiberius would never, never, never loosen the stopper of his wine flask outside the sacred bonds of marriage, so the whole thing was utter nonsense. She then began to belabor Equitius with her ivory and ebony walking stick, and it really did turn into the most outrageous mime you ever saw I kept wishing Lucius Cornelius Sulla had been there. He would have reveled in it! In the end Ahenobarbus Pipinna (I do love that nickname! Given to him by none other than Metellus Numidicus!) had to haul her down off the rostra while the audience screamed with laughter, and Scaurus fell about hooting himself to tears and only got worse when Pipinna and Piggle-wiggle and Piglet accused him of unsenatorial levity. The minute Lucius Equitius had the rostra to himself again, Saturninus marched up to him and asked him if he knew who the old horror was. Equitius said no, he didn't, which proved either that he hadn't been listening when Ahenobarbus roared out his introduction, or he was lying. But Saturninus explained to him in nice short words that she was his Auntie Sempronia, the sister of the Brothers Gracchi. Equitius looked amazed, said he'd never set eyes on his Auntie Sempronia in all his astonishingly full life, and then said he'd be very surprised if Tiberius Gracchus had ever told his sister about the mistress and child in a snug little love nest down on one of the Sempronius Gracchus farms. The crowd appreciated the good sense of this answer, and goes merrily on believing implicitly that Lucius Equitius is the natural son of Tiberius Gracchus. And the Senate not to mention Ahenobarbus is fulminating. Well, all except Saturninus, who smirks; Scaurus, who laughs; and me. Three guesses what I'm doing!
Publius Rutilius Rufus sighed and stretched his cramped hand, wishing that he could feel as uncomfortable writing a letter as Gaius Marius did; then perhaps he might not be driven to putting in all the delicious details which made the difference between a five-column missive and a fifty-five-column missive.
And that, dear Gaius Marius, is positively all. If I sit here a moment longer I'll think of more entertaining tales, and end in falling asleep with my nose in the inkpot. I do wish there was a better that is, a more traditionally Roman way of going about safeguarding your command than running yet again for the consulship. Nor do I see how you can possibly pull it off. But I daresay you will. Keep in good health. Remember, you're no spring chicken anymore, you're an old boiler, so don't go tail over comb and break any bones. I will write again when something interesting happens.
Gaius Marius got the letter at the beginning of November, and had just got it worked out so he could read it through with real enjoyment when Sulla turned up. That he was back for good he demonstrated by shaving off his now enormously long and drooping moustaches, and having his hair barbered. So while Sulla soaked blissfully in the bath, Marius read the letter out to him, and was ridiculously happy at having Sulla back to share such pleasures. They settled in the general's private study, Marius having issued instructions that he was not to be disturbed, even by Manius Aquillius. "Take off that wretched torc!" Marius said when the properly Roman, tunic-clad Sulla leaned forward and brought the great gold thing into view. But Sulla shook his head, smiling and fingering the splendid dragon heads which formed the ends of the torc's almost complete circle. "No, I don't think I ever will, Gaius Marius. Barbaric, isn't it?" "It's wrong on a Roman," grumbled Marius. "The trouble is, it's become my good-luck talisman, so I can't take it off in case my luck goes with it." He settled himself on a couch with a sigh of voluptuous ease. "Oh, the bliss of reclining like a civilized man again! I've been carousing bolt upright at tables with my arse on hard wooden benches for so long that I'd begun to think I had only dreamed there were races lay down to eat. And how good it is to be continent again! Gauls and Germans alike, they do everything to excess eat and drink until they spew all over each other, or else starve half to death because they went out to raid or do battle without thinking to pack a lunch. Ah, but they're fierce, Gaius Marius! Brave! I tell you, if they had one tenth of our organization and self-discipline, we couldn't hope to beat them." "Luckily for us, they don't have as much as a hundredth of either, so we can beat them. At least I think that's what you're saying. Here, drink this. It's Falernian." Sulla drank, deeply, yet slowly. "Wine, wine, wine! Nectar of the gods, balm for the sore heart, glue for the shredded spirit! How did I ever exist without it?" He laughed. "I don't care if I never see another horn of beer or tankard of mead in all the rest of my life! Wine is civilized. No belches, no farts, no distended belly on beer, a man becomes a walking cistern." "Where's Quintus Sertorius? All right, I hope?" "He's on his way, but we traveled separately, and I wanted to brief you alone, Gaius Marius," said Sulla. "Any way you want it, Lucius Cornelius, as long as I hear it," said Marius, watching him with affection. "I hardly know where to start." "At the beginning, then. Who are they? Where do they come from? How long has their migration been going on?" Relishing his wine, Sulla closed his eyes. "They don't call themselves Germani, and they don't regard themselves as a single people. They are the Cimbri, the Teutones, the Marcomanni, the Cherusci, and the Tigurini. The original homeland of the Cimbri and the Teutones is a long, wide peninsula lying to the north of Germania, vaguely described by some of the Greek geographers, who called it the Cimbrian Chersonnese. It seems the half farthest north was the home of the Cimbri, and the half joining onto the mainland of Germania was the home of the Teutones. Though they regard themselves as separate peoples, it's very difficult to see any physical characteristics peculiar to either people, though the languages are somewhat different they can understand each other, however. "They weren't nomads, but they didn't grow crops, and didn't farm in our sense. It would seem that their winters were more wet than snowy, and that the soil produced wonderful grass all year round. So they lived with and off cattle, eked out by a little oats and rye. Beef eaters and milk drinkers, a few vegetables, a little hard black bread, and porridge. "And then about the time that Gaius Gracchus died almost twenty years ago, at any rate they had a year of inundations. Too much snow on the mountains feeding their great rivers, too much rain from the skies, ferocious gales, and very high tides. The ocean Atlanticus covered the whole peninsula. And when the sea receded, they found the soil too saline to grow grass, and their wells brackish. So they built an army of wagons, gathered together the cattle and horses which had survived, and set off to find a new homeland." Marius was stiff with interest and excitement, sitting very straight in his chair, his wine forgotten. "All of them? How many were there?" he asked. "Not all of them, no. The old and the feeble were knocked on the head and buried in huge barrows. Only the warriors, the younger women, and the children migrated. As far as I can estimate, about six hundred thousand started to walk southeast down the valley of the great river we call the Albis." "But I believe that part of the world is hardly peopled," said Marius, frowning. "Why didn't they stay along the Albis?" Sulla shrugged. "Who knows, when they don't? They just seem to have given themselves into the hands of their gods, and waited for some sort of divine signal to tell them they had found a new homeland. Certainly they didn't seem to encounter much opposition as they walked, at least along the Albis. Eventually they came to the sources of the river, and saw high mountains for the first time in the memory of the race. The Cimbrian Chersonnese was flat and low-lying." "Obviously, if the ocean could flood it," said Marius, and lifted a hand hastily. "No, I didn't mean that sarcastically, Lucius Cornelius! I'm not good with words, or very tactful." He got up to pour more wine into Sulla's cup. "I take it that the mountains affected them powerfully?" "Indeed. Their gods were sky gods, but when they saw these towers tickling the underbellies of the clouds, they began to worship the gods they were sure lived beneath the towers, and shoved them up out of the ground. They've never really been very far from mountains since. In the fourth year they crossed an alpine watershed, and passed from the headwaters of the Albis to the headwaters of the Danubius, a river we know more about, of course. And they turned east to follow the Danubius toward the plains of the Getae and the Sarmatae." "Was that where they were going, then?" Marius asked. "To the Euxine Sea?" "It appears so," said Sulla. "However, they were blocked by the Boii from entering the basin of northern Dacia, and so were forced to keep following the course of the Danubius where it bends sharply south into Pannonia." "The Boii are Celts, of course," said Marius thoughtfully. "Celt and German didn't mix, I take it." "No, they certainly didn't. But the interesting thing is that nowhere have the Germans decided to stay put and fight for land. At the least sign of resistance from the local tribes, they've moved on. As they did away from the lands of the Boii. Then somewhere near the confluence of the Danubius with the Tisia and the Savus, they ran up against another wall of Celts, this time the Scordisci." "Our very own enemies, the Scordisci!" Marius exclaimed, grinning. "Well, isn't it comforting to find out now that we and the Scordisci have a common enemy?" One red-gold brow went up. "Considering that it happened about fifteen years ago and we knew nothing of it, it's hardly comforting," Sulla said dryly. "I'm not saying anything right today, am I? Forgive me, Lucius Cornelius. You've been living it; I'm merely sitting here so excited at finding out at last that my tongue has developed a forest of thumbs," said Marius. "It's all right, Gaius Marius, I do understand," said Sulla, smiling. "Go on, go on!" "Perhaps one of their greatest problems was that they had no leader worthy of the name. Nor any semblance of a a master plan, for want of a better phrase to describe it. I think they just waited for the day when some great king would give them permission to settle down on some of his vacant land." "And of course great kings are not prone to do that," said Marius. "No. Anyway, they turned back and began to travel west," Sulla went on, "only they left the Danubius. They followed the Savus first, then skewed a little north, and picked up the course of the Dravus, which they then tracked toward its sources. By this time they had been walking for over six years without staying for more than a few days anywhere." "They don't travel on the wagons?" asked Marius. "Rarely. They're harnessed to cattle, so they're not driven, just guided. If someone is ill or near term with a child, the wagon becomes a vehicle of transport, not otherwise," said Sulla. He sighed. "And of course we all know what happened next. They entered Noricum, and the lands of the Taurisci." "Who appealed to Rome, and Rome sent Carbo to deal with the invaders, and Carbo lost his army," said Marius. "And, as always, the Germans turned away from trouble," said Sulla. "Instead of invading Italian Gaul, they walked right into the high mountains, and came back to the Danubius a little to the east of its confluence with the Aenus. The Boii weren't going to let them go east, so they headed west along the Danubius, through the lands of the Marcomanni. For reasons I haven't been able to fathom, a large segment of the Marcomanni joined the Cimbri and the Teutones in this seventh year of the migration." "What about the thunderstorm?" Marius asked. "You know, the one which interrupted the battle between the Germans and Carbo, and saved at least some of Carbo's men. There were those who believed the Germans took the storm as a sign of divine wrath, and that that was what saved us from invasion." "I doubt it," said Sulla tranquilly. "Oh, I'm sure when the storm broke, the Cimbri it was the Cimbri who fought Carbo; they were closest to his position fled in terror, but I don't believe it deflected them from Italian Gaul. The real answer seems simply to be that they never liked waging war to win territory for themselves." "How fascinating! And here we see them as slavering hordes of barbarians just thirsting for Italy." Marius looked at Sulla keenly. "And what happened next?" "Well, they followed the Danubius right to its sources this time. In the eighth year they were joined by a group of real Germans, the Cherusci, who came down from their lands around the Visurgis River, and in the ninth year by a people of Helvetia called the Tigurini, who seem to have lived to the east of Lake Lemanna, and are definitely Celts. As are, I believe, the Marcomanni. However, both the Marcomanni and the Tigurini are very Germanic Celts." "They don't dislike the Germans, you mean?" "Far less than they dislike their fellow Celts!" Sulla grinned. "The Marcomanni had been warring with the Boii for centuries, and the Tigurini with the Helvetii. So 1 suppose when the German wagons rolled through, they thought it might be a pleasant change to head for parts unknown. By the time the migration crossed through the Jura into Gallia Comata, there were well over eight hundred thousand participants." "Who all descended upon the poor Aedui and Ambarri," said Marius. "And stayed there." "For over three years." Sulla nodded. "The Aedui and Ambarri were softer people, you see. Romanized, Gaius Marius! Teeth pulled by Gnaeus Domitius so that our province of Gaul-across-the-Alps would be safe er.
And the Germans were developing a taste for our fine white bread. Something to spread their butter on! And sop up their beef juice with. And mix into their awful blood puddings." "You speak feelingly, Lucius Cornelius." "I do, I do!" Smile fading, Sulla studied the surface of his wine reflectively, then looked up at Marius, his light eyes gleaming. "They've elected themselves an overall king," he said abruptly. "Oho!" said Marius softly. "His name is Boiorix, and he's Cimbric. The Cimbri are the most numerous people." "It's a Celtic name, though," said Marius. "Boiorix Boii. A very formidable nation. There are colonies of Boii all over the place Dacia, Thrace, Long-haired Gaul, Italian Gaul, Helvetia. Who knows? Maybe a long time ago they planted a colony among the Cimbri. After all, if this Boiorix says he's Cimbric, then he's Cimbric. They can't be so primitive that they have no genealogical lore." "Actually they have very little genealogical lore," said Sulla, propping himself on his elbow. "Not because they're particularly primitive, but because their whole structure is different from ours. Different from any people scattered around the Middle Sea, for that matter. They're not farmers, and when men don't own land and farm down the generations, they don't develop a sense of place. That means they don't develop a sense of family either. Tribal life group life, if you prefer is more important. They tend to eat as a community, which for them is more sensible. When houses are huts for sleeping and have no kitchens, or home is on wheels and has no kitchen, it's easier to kill whole beasts, spit them, roast them whole, and feed the tribe as a single group. "Their genealogical lore relates to the tribe, or even to the collection of individual tribes which make up the people as a whole. They have heroes they sing about, but they embroider their doings out of all proportion to what must have been actual fact a chieftain only two generations back behaves like Perseus or Hercules, he's become so shadowy as a man. Their concept of place is shadowy too. And the position chief or thane or priest or shaman takes precedence over the identity of the individual man filling it. The individual man becomes the position! He moves apart from his family, and his family doesn't rise with him. And when he dies, the position goes to someone the tribe selects without regard to what we would call family entitlements. Their ideas about family are very different from ours, Gaius Marius." Sulla lifted himself off his elbow to pour more wine. "You've actually been living with them!" gasped Marius. "Oh, I had to!" Sipping enough from his cup to diminish the level of the wine, Sulla added water. "I'm not used to it," he said, sounding surprised. "Never mind, my head will return, no doubt." He frowned. "I managed to infiltrate the Cimbri while they were still trying to fight their way across the Pyrenees. It would have been November of last year, the moment I returned from seeing you." "How?" asked Marius, fascinated. "Well, they were beginning to suffer what any people in a protracted war suffer including us, especially after Arausio. Since the whole nation save for the old and infirm is moving as a unit, every warrior who dies is likely to leave a widow and orphans. These women become a liability unless their male children are old enough to become warriors fairly quickly. So the widows have to scramble to find new husbands among the warriors not old enough or enterprising enough to have acquired women already. If a woman succeeds in attaching herself and her offspring to another warrior, she's allowed to continue as before. Her wagon is her dowry. Though not all the widowed women have wagons. And not all the widowed women find new mates. Owning a wagon definitely helps. They're given a certain amount of time to make fresh arrangements. Three months that is, one season. After that, they're killed along with their children and the members of their tribe who don't have wagons cast lots for vacant wagons. They kill those who are deemed too old to contribute productively to the welfare of the tribe, and excess girl-children are killed." Marius grimaced. "And I thought we were hard!" But Sulla shook his head. "What's hard, Gaius Marius? The Germans and the Gauls are like any other peoples. They structure their society to survive as a people. Those who become a drain on the community that it simply cannot afford must go. And which is better to set them adrift without men to look after them, or hit them on the head? To die slowly of starvation and cold, or quickly and without pain? That's how they look at it. That's how they have to look at it." "I suppose so," said Marius reluctantly. "Personally I take great delight in our old. Listening to them is worth giving them food and shelter." "But that's because we can afford to keep our old, Gaius Marius! Rome is very rich. Therefore Rome can afford to support some at least of those who contribute nothing productive to the community. But we don't condemn the exposing of unwanted children, do we?" Sulla asked. "Of course not!" "So what's the difference, really? When the Germans find a homeland, they'll become more like the Gauls. And the Gauls exposed to Greeks or Romans become more like Greeks or Romans. Having a homeland will enable the Germans to relax the rules; they'll acquire sufficient wealth to feed their old and their widows burdened with children. They're not city dwellers, they're country folk. Cities have different rules again, haven't you noticed? Cities breed disease to remove the old and the infirm, and cities decrease the farmer's sense of place and family. The bigger Rome gets, the closer to the Germans it gets." Marius scratched his head. "I'm lost, Lucius Cornelius. Get back to the subject, please! What happened to you? Did you find yourself a widow and tack yourself onto a tribe as a warrior?" Sulla nodded. "Exactly so. Sertorius did the same thing in a different tribe, which is why we haven't seen a great deal of each other, only occasionally to compare notes. We each found a woman with a wagon who hadn't managed to find a new mate. That was after establishing ourselves within our tribes as warriors, of course. We'd done that before we set out to see you last year, and we found our women as soon as we got back." "Didn't they reject you?" asked Marius. "After all, you were posing as Gauls, not as Germans." "True. But we fight well, Quintus Sertorius and I. No tribal chief sneezes at good warriors," said Sulla, grinning. "At least you haven't been called upon to kill Romans! Though no doubt you would have, had it been necessary." "Certainly," said Sulla. "Wouldn't you?" "Of course I would. Love is for the many. Sentiment is for the few," said Marius. "A man must fight to save the many, never the few." He brightened. "Unless, that is, he has the opportunity to do both." "I was a Gaul of the Carnutes serving as a Cimbric warrior," Sulla said, finding Marius's philosophizing as confusing as Marius found his. "In the very early spring there was a big council composed of all the chiefs of all the tribes. The Cimbri by then had moved as far west as they could, hoping to penetrate Spain where the Pyrenees are lowest. The council was held on the banks of the river the Aquitanians call the Aturis. Definite word had come, you see, that every tribe of the Cantabri, Astures, Vettones, western Lusitani, and Vascones had gathered on the Spanish side of the mountains to contend German passage into their lands. And at this council, all of a sudden, completely unexpected Boiorix emerged!" "I remember the report Marcus Cotta filed after Arausio," Marius said. "He was one of the two leaders who fell out, and the other was Teutobod of the Teutones." "He's very young," said Sulla, "about thirty, no more. Monstrously tall, and built like Hercules. Feet that look as big as licker-fish. But the interesting thing is that he's got a mind akin to ours. Both the Gauls and the Germans have patterns of thinking so different from any people of the Middle Sea that to us they seem barbarian! Whereas Boiorix has shown himself these past nine months to be a very different kind of barbarian. For one thing, he's had himself taught to read and write in Latin, not in Greek. I think I've already told you that when a Gaul is literate, he tends to be literate in Latin, not in Greek " "Boiorix, Lucius Cornelius!" said Marius. "Boiorix!" Smiling, Sulla resumed. "Back to Boiorix it is. He's been strong in the councils for perhaps four years, but this spring he overcame all opposition, and got himself appointed paramount chief we'd call him a king, certainly, because he's reserved the final decision in all situations for himself, and he isn't afraid to disagree with his council." "How did he get himself appointed?" Marius asked. "The old way," said Sulla. "Neither Germans nor Gauls hold elections, though they do sometimes vote in council. But council decisions are more likely to be made by whoever remains sober the longest, or has the loudest voice. As for Boiorix, he became king by right of combat. He took on all comers, and killed them. Not in a single engagement merely one a day until there were no more challengers left. All told, eleven thanes disputed his right. And bit the dust, in good old Homeric fashion." "King by killing one's rivals," said Marius thoughtfully. "Where's the satisfaction in that? Truly barbaric! Kill a rival in debate or court, and he'll live to fight again. No man should be without rivals. Alive, he shines against them because he's better than they are. Dead, he has no one to shine against at all." "I agree," said Sulla. "But in a barbarian world or an Eastern one, for that matter the whole idea is to kill all one's rivals. It's safer." "What happened to Boiorix after he became king?" "He told the Cimbri they were not going to Spain. There were far easier places, he said. Like Italy. But first, he said, the Cimbri were going to join up with the Teutones, the Tigurini, the Marcomanni, and the Cherusci. And then he would be king of the Germans as well as the Cimbri." Sulla refilled his cup, well watered. "We spent the spring and the summer moving north through Long-haired Gaul. We crossed the Garumna, the Liger, and the Sequana, and then we entered the lands of the Belgae." "The Belgae!" breathed Marius. "You've seen them?" "Yes, of course," said Sulla, looking casual. "There must have been war to the death." "Not at all. King Boiorix, you see, has taken to what you or I would call opening up negotiations. Until our summer journey through Long-haired Gaul, the Germans had revealed no interest in negotiating. Every time they've encountered one of our armies barring their progress, for instance, they've sent an embassage to us asking for permission to pass through our territory. We've always said no, naturally. So they ride away and they never come back for a second try. They've never dickered, or asked to sit down at a bargaining table, or attempted to find out if there was anything we'd be prepared to take from them in order to open up a fresh round of propositions. Whereas Boiorix has behaved very differently. He negotiated a passage through Long-haired Gaul for the Cimbri." "Did he now? What did he bargain with?" "He bought the Gauls and the Belgae off with meat, milk, butter and work in the fields. He bartered his cattle for their beer and their wheat, and offered his warriors to help plough extra ground to grow enough for everyone," said Sulla. Marius's eyebrows worked furiously. "Clever barbarian!" "Indeed he is, Gaius Marius. And so in complete peace and amity we followed the Isara River north from the Sequana, and came finally to the lands of a tribe of Belgae called the Atuatuci. Basically, the Atuatuci are Germans who live along the Mosa River just downstream from the Sabis, and who also live on the edge of a vast forest they call the Arduenna. It stretches east from the Mosa all the way to the Mosella, and unless you're a German, it's impenetrable. The Germans of Germania proper live inside the forests, and use them in much the same way as we use fortifications." Marius was thinking hard, for his eyebrows continued to writhe as if they had life of their own. "Continue, Lucius Cornelius. I'm finding the German Enemy more and more interesting." Sulla inclined his head. "I thought you would. The Cherusci actually come from a part of Germania not so very far from the lands of the Atuatuci, and claim the Atuatuci are their kinsmen. So they had persuaded the Teutones, the Tigurini, and the Marcomanni to go with them to the lands of the Atuatuci while the Cimbri were away south looking up at the Pyrenees. But when we of the Cimbri came upon the scene late in Sextilis, it wasn't a happy scene at all. The Teutones had antagonized the Atuatuci and the Cherusci to the point where there had been a lot of skirmishing, quite a few deaths, and an ill feeling that we Cimbri could see almost visibly growing." "But King Boiorix fixed all that," said Marius. "King Boiorix fixed all that!" Sulla said with a grin. "He settled the Atuatuci down and then called a grand council of the migrant Germans Cimbri, Teutones, Tigurini, Cherusci, and Marcomanni. At the council he announced that he was not only the King of the Cimbri, but the King of all the Germans. He had to fight a few duels, but not with his only serious rivals, Teutobod of the Teutones and Getorix of the Tigurini. They thought a bit like Romans themselves, because they both decided they liked living and would have considerably more nuisance value to King Boiorix alive than dead." “And how did you find all this out?' ' asked Marius. "Had you become a chieftain by this? Did you sit listening?" Sulla tried to look modest, humility being a little too out of character. "As a matter of fact, I had become a thane. Not a very big thane, you understand, just big enough to be invited to the councils. My wife Hermana she's actually a member of the Cherusci, not the Cimbri bore twin boys just as we reached the Mosa, and it was considered such a good omen that my status as tribal chief was elevated to group thane just in time to participate in the grand council of all the Germans." Marius roared with laughter. "Do you mean to say that in years to come, some poor Roman is going to come up against a couple of little Germans who look like you?" "It's possible," said Sulla, grinning. "And a few little Quintus Sertoriuses as well?" "One, at least." Marius sobered. "Continue, Lucius Cornelius." "He's very, very clever, our lad Boiorix. Whatever we do, we mustn't underrate him because he's a barbarian. Because he came up with a grand strategy you would have been proud to have thought of yourself. I do not exaggerate, believe me." Marius tensed. "I believe you! What's his grand strategy?" "As soon as the weather permits it next year March at the latest the Germans intend to invade Italy on three fronts," said Sulla. "When I say March, I mean that's when the whole eight hundred thousand of them are going to leave the lands of the Atuatuci. Boiorix has given everyone six months to complete the journey from the Mosa River to Italian Gaul." Both Marius and Sulla leaned forward. "He's divided them into three separate forces. The Teutones are to invade Italian Gaul from the west. They represent some quarter million of the total number. They'll be led by their king, Teutobod, and at this stage they plan to travel down the Rhodanus and along the Ligurian coast toward Genua and Pisae. It's my guess, however, that with Boiorix in charge of the whole invasion, before they start they'll have changed their route to the Via Domitia and the Mons Genava Pass. Which will bring them out on the Padus at Taurasia." "He's learning some geography as well as some Latin, is he?" asked Marius grimly. "I told you, Boiorix is a reader. He's also put Roman captives to the torture not quite all of those we lost at Arausio died. If they fell to the Cimbri, Boiorix kept them alive until he found out what he wanted to know. One cannot blame our men for co-operating. " Sulla pulled a face. "The Germans routinely resort to torture." "So that means the Teutones will be following the same route as the whole host took before Arausio," said Marius. "How are the others planning to enter Italian Gaul?" "The Cimbri are the most numerous of the three great German divisions," said Sulla. "All told, four hundred thousand of them at least. Where the Teutones go straight down the Mosa to the Arar and the Rhodanus, the Cimbri will move down the Rhenus all the way to Lake Brigantinus, go north of the lake over the watershed and down to the source of the Danubius. They'll go east along the Danubius until they reach the Aenus, then down the Aenus and cross into Italian Gaul through the Pass of Brennus. Which will put them on the Athesis, near Verona." "Led by King Boiorix himself," said Marius, and humped his head into his shoulders. "I like it less and less." "The third group is the smallest and least cohesive," Sulla went on. "The Tigurini, Marcomanni, and Cherusci. About two hundred thousand of them. They'll be led by Getorix of the Tigurini. At first Boiorix was going to send them in a straight line through the great German forests the Hercynian, Gabreta, and so on and have them strike south through Pannonia into Noricum. Then I think he wondered if they'd stick to it, and decided to make them travel with him down the Danubius to the Aenus. From there they'll keep on going east along the Danubius until they reach Noricum, and turn south. They'll enter Italian Gaul over the Carnic Alps, which will put them at Tergeste, with Aquileia not far away." "And each segment has six months to make the journey, you say?" Marius asked. "Well, I can see the Teutones doing it, but the Cimbri have a much longer journey, and the hybrids the longest journey of all." "And there you are mistaken, Gaius Marius," said Sulla. "In actual fact, from the point on the Mosa where all three divisions start out, the distance each division travels is much the same. All involve crossing the Alps, but only the Teutones will cross through country they haven't traversed before. The Germans have wandered everywhere through the Alps during the last eighteen years! They've been down the Danubius from its sources to Dacia; they've been down the Rhenus from its sources to the Helella; they've been down the Rhodanus from its sources to Arausio. They're alpine veterans." The breath hissed between Marius's teeth. "Jupiter, Lucius Cornelius, it's brilliant! But can they really do it? I mean, Boiorix has to bank on each division reaching Italian Gaul by October?" "I think the Teutones and the Cimbri will certainly do it. They're well led and strongly motivated. About the others, I can't be sure. Nor, I suspect, can Boiorix."