The Grass Crown

by Colleen McCullough

  He paused, threw his arms out. "Surely, Conscript Fathers of our Senate, you can see that war between Rome and Italy would be civil war? A conflict between brothers. A conflict upon the soil we call our own, and they call their own. How can we justify to our grandchildren the ruination of their wealth, their inheritances, on grounds as flimsy as these I hear from this assembly every time it meets? There is no victor in civil war. No spoils. No slaves to sell. Think about what I am asking you to do with a care and a detachment greater than any you have ever summoned! This is not a matter for emotions. Not a matter for prejudices. Not a matter for lightness. All I am really trying to do is to save my beloved Rome from the horrors of civil war."

  This time the House really listened. Drusus began to hope. Even Philippus, who sat looking angry and muttered under his breath from time to time, did not interject. Nor—perhaps more significantly—did the vociferous and malignant Caepio. Unless, of course, these were new tactics they had dreamed up during the six intervening days. It might even be that Caepio didn't want a nose as hugely swollen and sore as Philippus's.

  After Drusus was finished, Scaurus Princeps Senatus, Crassus Orator, Antonius Orator, and Scaevola all spoke in support of Drusus. And the House listened.

  But when Gaius Marius rose to speak, the peace shattered. At precisely that moment when Drusus had decided the cause was won. Afterward, Drusus was forced to conclude that Philippus and Caepio had planned it this way all along.

  Philippus jumped to his feet. "Enough!" he screamed, jumping off the curule dais. "It is enough, I say! Who are you, Marcus Livius Drusus, to corrupt the minds and the principles of men as great as our Princeps Senatus? That the Italian Marius is on your side I find inevitable, but the Leader of the House? My ears, my ears! Do they truly hear what some of our most revered consulars have said today?"

  "Your nose, your nose! Does it truly smell how you smell, Philippus?" mocked Antonius Orator.

  "Tace, Italian-lover!" shouted Philippus. "Shut your vile mouth, pull in your Italian-loving head!"

  As this last was a reference to a part of the male anatomy not mentioned in the House, Antonius Orator was up from his stool the moment the insult was uttered. Marius on one side of him and Crassus Orator on the other were ready, however, and pulled him back before he could attack Philippus.

  "I will be heard!" Philippus yelled. "Wake up to what is being put to you, you senatorial sheep! War? How can there possibly be war? The Italians have no arms and no men! They could hardly go to war with a flock of sheep— even sheep like you!"

  Sextus Caesar and Scaurus Princeps Senatus had been calling for order ever since Philippus had inserted himself into the proceedings; Sextus Caesar now beckoned to his lictors, kept inside today as a precaution. But before they could advance upon Philippus, standing in the middle of the floor, he had ripped the purple-bordered toga from his body, and thrown it at Scaurus.

  "Keep it, Scaurus, you traitor! Keep it, all of you! I am going into Rome to find another government!"

  "And I," cried Caepio, leaving the dais, "am going to the Comitia to assemble all the People, patrician and plebeian!"

  The House dissolved into chaos, backbencher senators milling without purpose, Scaurus and Sextus Caesar calling again and again for order, and most of those in the front and middle rows streaming out of the doors in the wake of Philippus and Caepio.

  The lower end of the Forum Romanum was crowded with those who waited to hear how the Senate felt at the end of this session. Caepio went straight to the rostra, shouting for the Whole People to assemble in their tribes. Not bothering with formalities—or with the fact that the Senate had not been legally dismissed, which meant no Comitia could be convoked—he launched into a diatribe against Drusus, who now stood beside him on the rostra.

  "Look at him, the traitor!" howled Caepio. "He's busy giving away our citizenship to every dirty Italian in this peninsula, to every flea-bitten Samnite shepherd, to every mentally incompetent Picentine rustic, to every stinking brigand in Lucania and Bruttium! And such is the caliber of our idiot Senate that it is actually about to let this traitor have his way! But I won't let them, and I won't let him!"

  Drusus turned to his nine fellow tribunes of the plebs, who had followed him onto the rostra; they were not pleased at the presumption of the patrician Caepio, no matter how they felt about Drusus's proposal. Caepio had called the Whole People, it was true, but he had done so before the Senate had been dismissed, and he had usurped the territory of the tribunes of the plebs in the most cavalier fashion; even Minicius was annoyed.

  "I am going to break this farce up," said Drusus, tight-lipped. "Are you all with me?"

  "We're with you," said Saufeius, who was Drusus's man.

  Drusus stepped to the front of the rostra. "This is an illegally convened meeting, and I veto its continuance!"

  "Get out of my meeting, traitor!" shouted Caepio.

  Drusus ignored him. "Go home, people of this city! I have interposed my veto against this meeting because it is not legal! The Senate is still officially in session!"

  "Traitor! People of Rome, are you going to let yourselves be ordered about by a man who wants to give away your most precious possession?" shrieked Caepio.

  Drusus lost his patience at last. "Arrest this lout, fellow tribunes of the plebs!" he cried, gesturing to Saufeius.

  Nine men surrounded Caepio and took hold of him, quelling his struggles easily; Philippus, who was standing on the floor of the well looking up at the rostra, suddenly thought of urgent business elsewhere, and fled.

  "I have had enough, Quintus Servilius Caepio!" said Drusus in a voice which could be heard throughout the lower Forum. "I am a tribune of the plebs, and you have obstructed me in the execution of my duties! Take heed, for this is my only warning. Cease and desist at once, or I will have you thrown from the Tarpeian Rock!"

  The Comitia well was Drusus's fief, and Caepio, seeing the look in Drusus's eyes, understood; the old rancor between patrician and plebeian was being called into effect. If Drusus did instruct the members of his college to take Caepio and throw him from the Tarpeian Rock, Drusus would be obeyed.

  "You haven't won yet!" Caepio yelled as he pulled free of the restraining hands and stormed off after the vanished Philippus.

  "I wonder," said Drusus to Saufeius as they watched the graceless exit of Caepio, "if Philippus is tired of his house guest yet?"

  "I'm tired of both of them," said Saufeius, and sighed sadly. "You realize, I hope, Marcus Livius, that had the Senate meeting continued, you would have secured your mandate?"

  "Of course I do. Why do you think Philippus suddenly went into that manic temper tantrum? What a terrible actor he is!" said Drusus, and laughed. "Throwing his toga away! What next?"

  "Aren't you disappointed?"

  "Almost to death. But I will not be stopped. Not until I have no breath left in my body."

  The Senate resumed its deliberations on the Ides, officially a day of rest, and therefore not a day upon which the Comitia could meet. Caepio would have no excuse to quit the session.

  Sextus Caesar was looking worn out, his breathing audible throughout the House, but he saw the initial ceremonies to their conclusion, then rose to speak.

  "I will tolerate no more of these disgraceful goings-on," he said, voice clear and carrying. "As for the fact that the chief source of the disruptions emanates from the curule podium—I regard that as an additional humiliation. Lucius Marcius and Quintus Servilius Caepio, you will conduct yourselves as befits your office—which, I take leave to inform you, neither of you adorns! You demean it, both of you! If your lawlessness and sacrilegious conduct continue, I will send the fasces to the temple of Venus Libitina, and refer matters to the electors in their Centuries." He nodded to Philippus. "You now have the floor, Lucius Marcius. But heed me well! I have had enough. So has the Leader of the House."

  "I do not thank you, Sextus Julius, any more than I thank the Leader of the House, and all the other members who ar
e masquerading as patriots," said Philippus impudently. "How can a man claim to be a Roman patriot, and want to give our citizenship away? The answer is that he cannot be the one and do the other! The Roman citizenship is for Romans. It should not be given to anyone who is not by family, by ancestry, and by legal writ entitled to it. We are the children of Quirinus. The Italians are not. And that, senior consul, is all I have to say. There is no more to be said."

  "There is much more to be said!" Drusus countered. "That we are the children of Quirinus is inarguable. Yet Quirinus is not a Roman god! He is a god of the Sabines, which is why he lives on the Quirinal, where the city of the Sabines once stood. In other words, Lucius Marcius, Quirinus is an Italian god! Romulus took him into our fold, Romulus made him Roman. But Quirinus belongs equally to the people of Italy. How can we betray Rome by making her mightier? For that is what we will be doing when we give the citizenship to all of Italy. Rome will be Italy, and mighty. Italy will be Rome, and mighty. What as the descendants of Romulus we retain will be ours forever, exclusively. That can never belong to anyone else. But what Romulus gave us is not the citizenship! That, we have already given to many who cannot claim to be the children of Romulus, the natives of the city of Rome. If Romanness is at issue, why is Quintus Varius Severus Hybrida Sucronensis sitting in this august body? His is a name, Quintus Servilius Caepio, that I note you have refrained from mentioning whenever you and Lucius Marcius have sought to impugn the Romanness of certain members of this House!

  Yet Quintus Varius is truly not a Roman! He never laid eyes on this city nor spoke Latin in normal congress until he was in his twenties! Yet—here he sits by the grace of Quirinus in the Senate of Rome—a man less Roman by far in his thoughts, in his speech, in his way of looking at things, than any Italian! If we are to do as Lucius Marcius Philippus wants, and confine the citizenship of Rome to those among us who can claim family, ancestry, and legal writ, then the first man to have to leave both this House and the city of Rome would be Quintus Varius Severus Hybrida Sucronensis! He is the foreigner!"

  That of course brought Varius cursing to his feet, despite the fact that, as a pedarius, he was not allowed to speak.

  Sextus Caesar summoned all his paucity of breath, and roared for order so loudly that order was restored. "Marcus Aemilius, Leader of this House, I see you wish to speak. You have the floor."

  Scaurus was angry. "I will not see this House degenerate to the level of a cock-pit because we are disgraced by curule magistrates of a quality not fit to clean vomit off the streets! Nor will I make reference to the right of any man to sit in this august body! All I want to say is that if this House is to survive—and if Rome is to survive—we must be as liberal to the Italians in the matter of our citizenship as we have been to certain men sitting in this House today."

  But Philippus was on his feet. "Sextus Julius, when you gave the Leader of the House permission to speak, you did not acknowledge that I wished to speak. As consul, I am entitled to speak first."

  Sextus Caesar blinked. "I thought you had done, Lucius Marcius. Are you not done, then?"

  "No."

  "Then please, will you get whatever it is you have to say over with? Do you mind waiting until the junior consul has his say, Leader of the House?"

  "Of course not," said Scaurus affably, and sat down.

  "I propose," said Philippus weightily, "that this House strike each and every one of the laws of Marcus Livius Drusus off the tablets. None has been passed legally."

  "Arrant nonsense!" said Scaurus indignantly. "Never in the history of the Senate has any tribune of the plebs gone about his legislating with more scrupulous attention to the laws of procedure than Marcus Livius Drusus!"

  "Nonetheless, his laws are not valid," said Philippus, whose nose was apparently beginning to throb greatly, for he began to pant, fingers fluttering around the shapeless blob in the middle of his face. "The gods have indicated their displeasure."

  "My meetings met with the approval of the gods too," said Drusus flatly.

  "They are sacrilegious, as the events throughout Italy over the past ten months clearly demonstrate," said Philip-pus. "I say that the whole of Italy has been torn apart by manifestations of divine and godly wrath!"

  "Oh, really, Lucius Marcius! Italy is always being torn apart by manifestations of divine and godly wrath," said Scaurus wearily.

  "Not the way it has been this year!" Philippus drew a breath. “I move that this House recommend to the Assembly of the Whole People that the laws of Marcus Livius Drusus be annulled, on the grounds that the gods have demonstrated marked displeasure. And, Sextus Julius, I will see a division. Now."

  Scaurus and Marius were both frowning, sensing in this something as yet hidden, but unable to see what it was. That Philippus would be defeated was certain. So why, after such a brief and uninspiring address, was he insisting upon a division?

  The House divided. Philippus lost by a large majority. He then lost his temper, screaming and ranting until he spat; the urban praetor, Quintus Pompeius Rufus, near him on the dais, pulled his toga ostentatiously over his head to ward off the saliva rain.

  "Greedy ingrates! Monumental fools! Sheep! Insects! Offal! Butcher's scraps! Maggots! Pederasts! Fellators! Violators of little girls! Dead flesh! Whirlpools of avarice!" were but some of the names Philippus hurled at his fellow senators.

  Sextus Caesar allowed him sufficient time to run down, then had his chief lictor pound the bundle of rods on the floor until the rafters boomed.

  "Enough!" he shouted. "Sit down and be quiet, Lucius Marcius, or I will have you ejected from this meeting!"

  Philippus sat down, chest heaving, nose beginning to drip a straw-colored fluid. "Sacrilege!" he howled, drawing the word out eerily. After which he did sit quietly.

  "What is he up to?" whispered Scaurus to Marius.

  "I don't know. But I wish I did!" growled Marius.

  Crassus Orator rose. "May I speak, Sextus Julius?"

  "You may, Lucius Licinius."

  "I do not wish to talk about the Italians, or our cherished Roman citizenship, or the laws of Marcus Livius," Crassus Orator said in his beautiful, mellifluous voice. "I am going to talk about the office of consul, and I will preface my remarks with an observation—that never in all my years in this House have I seen and heard the office of consul abused, abashed, abased as it has been in these last days by Lucius Marcius Philippus. No man who has treated his office—the highest in the land!—the way Lucius Marcius Philippus has, ought to be allowed to continue in it! However, when the electors put a man in office he is not bound by any code save those of his own intelligence and good manners, and the many examples offered him by the mos maiorum.

  "To be consul of Rome is to be elevated to a level just a little below our gods, and higher by far than any king. The office of consul is freely given and does not rest upon threats or the power of retribution. For the space of one year, the consul is supreme. His imperium outranks that of any governor. He is the commander-in-chief of the armies, he is the leader of the government, he is the head of the Treasury—and he is the figurehead of every last thing the Republic of Rome has come to mean! Be he patrician or be he New Man, be he fabulously rich or relatively poor, he is the consul. Only one man is his equal, and that man is the other consul. Their names are inscribed upon the consular fasti, there to glitter for all time.

  "I have been consul. Perhaps thirty men sitting here today have been consuls, and some of them have been censors as well. I shall ask them how they feel at this moment—how do you feel at this moment, gentlemen consulars, after listening to Lucius Marcius Philippus since the beginning of this month? Do you feel as I feel? Unclean? Disgraced? Humiliated? Do you think it right that this third-time-lucky occupant of our office should go uncensured? You do not? Good! Nor, gentlemen consulars, do I!"

  Crassus Orator turned from the front rows to glare fiercely at Philippus on the curule dais. "Lucius Marcius Philippus, you are the worst consul I have ever seen! Were I si
tting in Sextus Julius's chair, I would not be one tenth as patient as he! How dare you swish round the vici of our beloved city preceded by your twelve-lictor escort, calling yourself a consul? You are not a consul! You are not fit to lick a consul's boots! In fact, if I may borrow a phrase from our Leader, you are not fit to clean vomit off the streets! Instead of being a model of exemplary behavior to your juniors in this assemblage and to those outside in the Forum, you conduct yourself like the worst demagogue who ever prated from the rostra, like the most foul-mouthed heckler who ever stood at the back of any Forum crowd! How dare you take advantage of your office to hurl vituperations at the members of this House? How dare you imply that other men have acted illegally?" He pointed his finger at Philippus, drew a breath, and roared, "I have put up with you long enough, Lucius Marcius Philippus! Either conduct yourself like a consul, or stay at home!"

  When Crassus Orator resumed his place the House applauded strenuously; Philippus sat looking at the ground with head at an angle preventing anyone from seeing his face, while Caepio glared indignantly at Crassus Orator.

  Sextus Caesar cleared his throat. "Thank you, Lucius Licinius, for reminding me and all who hold this office who and what the consul is. I take as much heed of your words as I hope Lucius Marcius has. And, since it seems none of us can conduct ourselves decently in this present atmosphere, I am concluding this meeting. The House will sit again eight days from now. We are in the midst of the ludi Romani, and I for one think it behooves us to find a more fitting way to salute Rome and Romulus than acrimonious and ill-mannered meetings of the Senate. Have a good holiday, Conscript Fathers, and enjoy the games."

  Scaurus Princeps Senatus, Drusus, Crassus Orator, Scaevola, Antonius Orator and Quintus Pompeius Rufus repaired to the house of Gaius Marius, there to drink wine and talk over the day's events.