The First Man in Rome

by Colleen McCullough

  However, there were unforeseen disadvantages in fielding an army of proletarii. The old-style propertied soldiers of Rome were mostly literate and numerate, so had no difficulty recognizing flags, numbers, letters, symbols. Marius’s army was mostly illiterate, barely numerate. Sulla instituted a program whereby each unit of eight men who tented and messed together had at least one man in it who could read and write, and for the reward of seniority over his fellows, was given the duty of teaching his comrades all about numbers, letters, symbols, and standards, and if possible was to teach them all to read and write. But progress was slow; full literacy would have to wait until the winter rains in Africa rendered campaigning impossible.

  Marius himself devised a simple, highly emotive new rallying point for his legions, and made sure all ranks were indoctrinated with superstitious awe and reverence for his new rallying point. He gave each legion a beautiful silver spread-winged eagle upon a very tall, silver-clad pole; the eagle was to be carried by the aquilifer, the man considered the best specimen in his whole legion, exclusively clad in a lion skin as well as silver armor. The eagle, said Marius, was the legion’s symbol for Rome, and every soldier was obliged to swear a dreadful oath that he would die rather than allow his legion’s eagle to fall into the hands of the Enemy.

  Of course he knew exactly what he was doing. After half a lifetime under the colors—and being the kind of man he was—he had formed firm opinions and knew a great deal more about the actual individual ranker soldiers than any high aristocrat. His ignoble origins had put him in a perfect position to observe, just as his superior intelligence had put him in a perfect position to make deductions from his observations. His personal achievements underrated, his undeniable abilities mostly used for the advancement of his betters, Gaius Marius had been waiting for a very long time before his first consulship arrived—and thinking, thinking, thinking.

  *

  Quintus Caecilius Metellus’s reaction to the vast upheaval Marius had provoked in Rome surprised even his son, for Metellus was always thought a rational, controlled kind of man. Yet when he got the news that his command in Africa had been taken away from him and given to Marius, he went publicly mad, weeping and wailing, tearing his hair, lacerating his breast, all in the marketplace of Utica rather than the privacy of his offices, and much to the fascination of the Punic population. Even after the first shock of his grief passed, and he withdrew to his residence, the merest mention of Marius’s name was enough to bring on another bout of noisy tears—and many unintelligible references to Numantia, some trio or other, and some pigs.

  The letter he received from Lucius Cassius Longinus, senior consul-elect, did much to cheer him up, however, and he spent some days organizing the demobilization of his six legions, having obtained their consent to re-enlist for service with Lucius Cassius the moment they reached Italy. For, as Cassius told him in the letter, Cassius was determined that he was going to do a great deal better in Gaul-across-the-Alps against the Germans and their allies the Volcae Tectosages than Marius the Upstart could possibly do in Africa, troopless as he would be.

  Ignorant of Marius’s solution to his problem (in fact, he would not learn of it until he arrived back in Rome), Metellus quit Utica at the end of March, taking all six of his legions with him. He chose to go to the port of Hadrumetum, over a hundred miles to the southeast of Utica, and there sulked until he heard that Marius had arrived in the province to assume command. In Utica to wait for Marius he left Publius Rutilius Rufus.

  So when Marius sailed in, it was Rutilius who greeted him on the pier, Rutilius who formally handed over the province.

  “Where’s Piggle-wiggle?” asked Marius as they strolled off to the governor’s palace.

  “Indulging in a monumental snit way down in Hadrumetum, along with all his legions,” said Rutilius, sighing. “He has taken a vow to Jupiter Stator that he will not see you or speak to you.’’

  “Silly fool,” said Marius, grinning. “Did you get my letters about the capite censi and the new legions?”

  “Of course. And I’m a trifle tender around the ears due to the paeans of praise Aulus Manlius has sung about you since he got here. A brilliant scheme, Gaius Marius.” But when he looked at Marius, Rutilius didn’t smile. “They’ll make you pay for your temerity, old friend. Oh, how they’ll make you pay!”

  “They won’t, you know. I’ve got them right where I want them—and by all the gods, I swear that’s the way I’m going to keep them until the day I die! I am going to grind the Senate into the dust, Publius Rutilius.”

  “You won’t succeed. In the end, it’s the Senate will grind you into the dust.”

  “Never!”

  And from that opinion Rutilius Rufus could not budge him.

  Utica was looking its best, its plastered buildings all freshly whitewashed after the winter rains, a gleaming and spotless town of modestly high buildings, flowering trees, a languorous warmth, a colorfully clad people. The little squares and plazas were thronged with street stalls and cafes; shade trees grew in their centers; the cobbles and paving stones looked clean and swept. Like most Roman, Ionian Greek, and Punic towns, it was provided with a good system of drains and sewers, had public baths for the populace and a good water supply aqueducted in from the lovely sloping mountains blue with distance all around it.

  “Publius Rutilius, what are you going to do?” asked Marius once they reached the governor’s study, and were settled, both of them amused at the way Metellus’s erstwhile servants now bowed and scraped to Marius. “Would you like to stay on here as my legate? I didn’t offer Aulus Manlius the top post.”

  Rutilius shook his head emphatically. “No, Gaius Marius, I’m going home. Since Piggle-wiggle is leaving, my term is up, and I’ve had enough of Africa. Quite candidly, I don’t fancy seeing poor Jugurtha in chains—and now that you’re in command, that’s how he’s going to end up. No, it’s Rome and a bit of leisure for me, a chance to do some writing and cultivate friends.”

  “What if one day not so far in the future, I were to ask you to run for the consulship—with me as your colleague?”

  Rutilius threw him a puzzled yet very keen glance. “Now what are you plotting?”

  “It has been prophesied, Publius Rutilius, that I will be consul of Rome no less than seven times.”

  Any other man might have laughed, or sneered, or simply refused to believe. But not Publius Rutilius Rufus. He knew his Marius. “A great fate. It raises you above your equals, and I’m too Roman to approve of that. But if such is the pattern of your fate, you cannot fight it, any more than I can. Would I like to be consul? Yes, of course I would! I consider it my duty to ennoble my family. Only save me for a year when you’re going to need me, Gaius Marius.”

  “I will indeed,” said Marius, satisfied.

  *

  When the news of the elevation of Marius to the command of the war reached the two African kings, Bocchus took fright and bolted home to Mauretania immediately, leaving Jugurtha to face Marius unsupported. Not that Jugurtha was cowed by his father-in-law’s desertion, any more than he was cowed by the idea of Marius’s new position; he recruited among the Gaetuli and bided his time, leaving it to Marius to make the first move.

  By the end of June four of his six legions were in the Roman African province, and Marius felt pleased enough with their progress to lead them into Numidia. Concentrating on sacking towns, plundering farmlands, and fighting minor engagements, he blooded his lowly recruits and welded them into a formidable little army. However, when Jugurtha saw the size of the Roman force and understood the implications of its Head Count composition, he decided to risk the chance of battle, recapture Cirta.

  But Marius arrived before the city could fall, leaving Jugurtha no option save a battle, and at last the Head Count soldiers were offered the opportunity to confound their Roman critics. A jubilant Marius was able afterward to write home to the Senate that his pauper troops had behaved magnificently, fought not one iota less bravely or ent
husiastically because they had no vested property interests in Rome. In fact, the Head Count army of Marius defeated Jugurtha so decisively that Jugurtha himself was obliged to throw away his shield and spear in order to escape uncaptured.

  The moment King Bocchus heard of it, he sent an embassage to Marius begging that he be allowed to re-enter the Roman client fold; and when Marius failed to respond, he sent more embassages. Finally Marius did consent to see a deputation, which hurried home to tell the King that Marius didn’t care to do business with him on any level. So Bocchus was left to chew his nails down to the quick and wonder why he had ever succumbed to Jugurtha’s blandishments.

  Marius himself remained wholly occupied in removing from Jugurtha every square mile of settled Numidian territory, his aim being to make it impossible for the King to seek recruits or supplies in the rich river valleys and coastal areas of his realm. And make it impossible for the King to accrue additional revenues. Only among the Gaetuli and Garamantes, the inland Berber tribes, could Jugurtha now be sure of finding shelter and soldiers, be sure his armaments and his treasures were safe from the Romans.

  *

  Julilla gave birth to a sickly seven-months baby girl in June, and in late Quinctilis her sister, Julia, produced a big, healthy, full-term baby boy, a little brother for Young Marius. Yet it was Julilla’s miserable child who lived, Julia’s strong second son who died, when the foetid summer vapors of Sextilis curled their malignant tentacles among the hills of Rome, and enteric fevers became epidemic.

  “A girl’s all right, I suppose,” said Sulla to his wife, “but before I leave for Africa you’re going to be pregnant again, and this time you’re going to have a boy.”

  Unhappy herself at having given Sulla a puling, puking girl-baby, Julilla entered into the making of a boy with great enthusiasm. Oddly enough, she had survived her first pregnancy and the actual birth of her tiny daughter better by far than her sister, Julia, had, though she was thin, not well, and perpetually fretful. Where Julia, better built and better armed emotionally against the tempests of marriage and maternity, suffered badly that second time.

  “At least we have a girl to marry off to someone we need when the time comes,” said Julilla to Julia in the autumn, after the death of Julia’s second son, and by which time Julilla knew she was carrying another child. “Hopefully this one will be a boy.” Her nose ran; she sniffled, hunted for her linen handkerchief.

  Still grieving, Julia found herself with less patience and sympathy for her sister than of yore, and understood at last why their mother, Marcia, had said—and grimly—that Julilla was permanently damaged.

  Funny, she thought now, that you could grow up with someone, yet never really understand what was happening to her. Julilla was ageing at the gallop—not physically, not even mentally—a process of the spirit, rather, intensely self-destructive. The starvation had undermined her in some way, left her unable to lead a happy kind of life. Or maybe this present Julilla had always been there beneath the giggles and the silliness, the enchanting girlish tricks which had so charmed the rest of the family.

  One wants to believe the illness caused this change, she thought sadly; one needs to find an external cause, for the alternative is to admit that the weakness was always there.

  She would never be anything save beautiful, Julilla, with that magical honey-amber coloring, her grace of movement, her flawless features. But these days there were circles beneath her huge eyes, two lines already fissuring her face between cheeks and nose, a mouth whose dented corners now turned down. Yes, she looked weary, discontented, restless. A faint note of complaint had crept into her speech, and still she heaved those enormous sighs, a habit quite unconscious but very, very irritating. As was her tendency to sniffle.

  “Have you got any wine?” Julilla asked suddenly.

  Julia blinked in simple astonishment, aware that she was faintly scandalized, and annoyed at herself for such a priggish reaction. After all, women did drink wine these days! Nor was it regarded as a sign of moral collapse anymore, save in circles Julia herself found detestably intolerant and sanctimonious. But when your young sister, barely twenty years old and brought up in the house of Gaius Julius Caesar, asked you for wine in the middle of the morning without a meal or a man in sight—yes, it was a shock!

  “Of course I have wine,” she said.

  “I’d love a cup,” said Julilla, who had fought against asking; Julia was bound to comment, and it was unpleasant to expose oneself to the disapproval of one’s older, stronger, more successful sister. Yet she hadn’t been able to refrain from asking. The interview was difficult, the more so because it was overdue.

  These days Julilla found herself out of patience with her family, uninterested in them, bored by them. Especially by the admired Julia, wife of the consul, rapidly becoming one of Rome’s most esteemed young matrons. Never put a foot wrong, that was Julia. Happy with her lot, in love with her ghastly Gaius. Marius, model wife, model mother. How boring indeed.

  “Do you usually drink wine in the mornings?” Julia asked, as casually as she could.

  A shrug, a flapping and fluttering of hands, a brightly burning look that acknowledged the shaft, yet refused to take it seriously. “Well, Sulla does, and he likes to have company.”

  “Sulla? Do you call him by his cognomen!”

  Julilla laughed. “Oh, Julia, you are old-fashioned! Of course I call him by his cognomen! We don’t live inside the Senate House, you know! Everyone in our circles uses the cognomen these days, it’s chic. Besides, Sulla likes me to call him Sulla—he says being called Lucius Cornelius makes him feel a thousand years old.”

  “Then I daresay I am old-fashioned,” said Julia, making an effort to be casual. A sudden smile lit her face; perhaps it was the light, but she looked younger than her younger sister, and more beautiful. “Mind you, I do have some excuse! Gaius Marius doesn’t have a cognomen.”

  The wine came. Julilla poured a glass of it, but ignored the alabaster decanter of water. “I’ve often wondered about that,” she said, and drank deeply. “Surely after he’s beaten Jugurtha he’ll find a really impressive cognomen to assume. Trust that stuck-up sourpuss Metellus to talk the Senate into letting him celebrate a triumph, and assume the cognomen Numidicus! Numidicus ought to have been kept for Gaius Marius!”

  “Metellus Numidicus,” said Julia with punctilious regard for facts, “qualified for his triumph, Julilla. He killed enough Numidians and brought home enough booty. And if he wanted to call himself Numidicus, and the Senate said he might, then that’s that, isn’t it? Besides, Gaius Marius always says that the simple Latin name of his father is good enough for him. There’s only one Gaius Marius, where there are dozens of Caecilius Metelluses. You wait and see—my husband isn’t going to need to distinguish himself from the herd by a device as artificial as a cognomen. My husband is going to be the First Man in Rome—and by dint of nothing except superior ability.”

  Julia eulogizing the likes of Gaius Marius was quite sickening; Julilla’s feelings about her brother-in-law were a mixture of natural gratitude for his generosity, and a contempt acquired from her new friends, all of whom despised him as an upstart, and in consequence despised his wife. So Julilla refilled her cup, and changed the subject.

  “This isn’t a bad wine, sister. Mind you, Marius has the money to indulge himself, I daresay.” She drank, but less deeply than from her first cup. “Are you in love with Marius?” she asked, suddenly realizing that she honestly didn’t know.

  A blush! Annoyed at betraying herself, Julia sounded defensive when she answered. “Of course I’m in love with him! And I miss him dreadfully, as a matter of fact. Surely there’s nothing wrong with that, even among those in your circles. Don’t you love Lucius Cornelius?”

  “Yes!” said Julilla, who now found herself on the defensive. “But I do not miss him now he’s gone, I can assure you! For one thing, if he stays away for two or three years, I won’t be pregnant again the minute this one is born.” She
sniffled. “Waddling around weighing a talent more than I ought is not my idea of happiness. I like to float like a feather, I hate feeling heavy! I’ve either been pregnant or getting over a pregnancy the whole time I’ve been married. Ugh!”

  Julia held her temper. “It’s your job to be pregnant,” she said coolly.

  “Why is that women never have any choice in a job?” asked Julilla, beginning to feel tearful.

  “Oh, don’t be ridiculous!” Julia snapped.

  “Well, it’s an awful way to have to live one’s life,” said Julilla mutinously, feeling the effects of the wine at last. And it made her cheer up; she summoned a conscious effort, and smiled. “Let’s not quarrel, Julia! It’s bad enough that Mama can’t find it in herself to be civil to me.”

  And that was true, Julia acknowledged; Marcia had never forgiven Julilla for her conduct over Sulla, though quite why was a mystery. Their father’s frostiness had lasted a very few days, after which he treated Julilla with all the warmth and joy her beginning recovery inspired. But their mother’s frostiness persisted. Poor, poor Julilla! Did Sulla really like her to drink wine with him in the mornings, or was that an excuse? Sulla, indeed! It lacked respect.

  *

  Sulla arrived in Africa at the end of the first week in September with the last two legions and two thousand magnificent Celtic cavalrymen from Italian Gaul. He found Marius in the throes of mounting a major expedition into Numidia, and was hailed gladly, and put immediately to work.

  “I’ve got Jugurtha on the run,” Marius said jubilantly, “even without my full army. Now that you’re here, we’ll see some real action, Lucius Cornelius.”

  Sulla passed over letters from Julia and from Gaius Julius Caesar, then screwed up his courage to offer condolences for the death of Marius’s unseen second son.

  “Please accept my sympathy for the passing of your little Marcus Marius,” he said, awkwardly aware that his own ratlike daughter, Cornelia Sulla, was doggedly continuing to survive.