Deeming it high time he entered the conversation, Publius Rutilius Rufus put his empty wine cup down on the table in front of his couch with a loud bang, and seized his opportunity. “I suppose you mean Mithridates has his eye on our Roman Asia Province,” he said, nodding wisely. “Why wouldn’t he want it? So enormously rich! And the most civilized place on earth—well, it’s been Greek since before the Greeks were Greek! Homer lived and worked in our Asia Province, can you imagine it?”
“I’d probably find it easier to imagine it if you started to accompany yourself on a lyre,” said Sulla, laughing.
“Now be serious, Lucius Cornelius! I doubt King Mithridates thinks of our Roman Asia Province as a joke—nor must we, even in jest.” Joke—jest; Rutilius Rufus paused to admire his verbal virtuosity, and lost his chance to dominate the conversation.
“I don’t think there can be any doubt that Mithridates is slavering at the thought of owning our Asia Province,” said Marius.
“But he’s an oriental,” said Sulla positively. “All the oriental kings are terrified of Rome—even Jugurtha, who was far more exposed to Rome than any eastern king, was terrified of Rome. Look at the insults and indignities Jugurtha put up with before he went to war against us. We literally forced him to war.”
“Oh, I think Jugurtha always intended to go to war against us,” said Rutilius Rufus.
“I disagree,” said Sulla, frowning. “I think he dreamed of going to war against us, but understood it could be nothing but a dream. It was we who forced the war upon him when Aulus Albinus entered Numidia looking for loot. In fact, that’s how our wars usually begin! Some gold-greedy commander who shouldn’t be let lead a parade of children is given Roman legions to lead, and, off he goes looking for loot—not for Rome’s sake, but for the sake of his own purse. Carbo and the Germans, Caepio and the Germans, Silanus and the Germans—the list is endless.”
“You’re getting away from the point, Lucius Cornelius,” said Marius gently.
“Sorry, so I am!” Unabashed, Sulla grinned at his old commander affectionately. “Anyway, I think the situation in the east is very similar to the situation in Africa as it was before Jugurtha went to war against us. We all know that Bithynia and Pontus are traditional enemies, and we all know that both King Nicomedes and King Mithridates would love to expand, at least within Anatolia. And in Anatolia there are two wonderfully rich lands which make their royal mouths water—Cappadocia, and our Roman Asia Province. Ownership of Cappadocia gives a king swift access to Cilicia, and fabulously rich growing soil. Ownership of our Roman Asia Province gives a king unparalleled coastal access onto the Middle Sea, half a hundred superb seaports, and a fabulously rich hinterland. A king wouldn’t be human if he didn’t hunger after both lands.”
“Well, Nicomedes of Bithynia I don’t worry about,” said Marius, interrupting. “He’s tied hand and foot to Rome, and he knows it. Nor do I think that—for the present, at any rate—our Roman Asia Province is in any danger. It’s Cappadocia.”
Sulla nodded. “Exactly. Asia Province is Roman. And I don’t think King Mithridates is so different from the rest of his oriental colleagues that he’s shed his fear of Rome enough to attempt to invade our Asia Province, misgoverned shambles though it might be. But Cappadocia isn’t Roman. Though it does fall within our sphere, it seems to me that both Nicomedes and young Mithridates have assumed Cappadocia is a little too remote and a little too unimportant for Rome to go to war about. On the other hand, they move like thieves to steal it, concealing their motive behind puppets and relatives.”
There came a grunt from Marius. “I wouldn’t call old King Nicomedes’s marrying the Queen Regent of Cappadocia furtive!”
“Yes, but that situation didn’t last long, did it? King Mithridates was outraged enough to murder his own sister! He had her son back on the Cappadocian throne quicker than you can say Lucius Tiddlypuss.”
“Unfortunately it’s Nicomedes is our official Friend and Ally, not Mithridates,” said Marius. “It’s a pity I wasn’t in Rome when all that was going on.”
“Oh, come now!” said Rutilius Rufus indignantly. “The kings of Bithynia have been officially entitled Friend and Ally for over fifty years! During our last war against Carthage, so too was the King of Pontus an official Friend and Ally. But this Mithridates’s father destroyed the possibility of friendship with Rome when he bought Phrygia from Manius Aquillius’s father. Rome hasn’t had relations with Pontus since. Besides which, it’s impossible to grant the status of Friend and Ally to two kings at loggerheads with each other unless that status prevents war between them. In the case of Bithynia and Pontus, the Senate decided awarding Friend and Ally status to both kings would only make matters worse between them. And that in turn meant rewarding Nicomedes of Bithynia because the record of Bithynia is better than Pontus.”
“Oh, Nicomedes is a silly old fowl!” said Marius impatiently. “He’s been ruling for over fifty years, and he wasn’t a child when he eliminated his tata from the throne, either. I’d guess his age at over eighty. And he exacerbates the Anatolian situation!”
“By behaving like a silly old fowl, I presume is what you mean.” The retort was accompanied by a near-purple look from Rutilius Rufus’s eyes, very like his niece Aurelia’s, and just as direct, if a little softer. “Do you not think, Gaius Marius, that you and I are very nearly of an age to be called silly old fowls?”
“Come, come, no ruffled feathers, now!” said Sulla, grinning. “I know what you mean, Gaius Marius. Nicomedes is well into his senescence, whether he’s capable of ruling or not—and one must presume he is capable of ruling. It’s the most Hellenized of all the oriental courts, but it’s still oriental. Which means if he dribbled on his shoes just once, his son would have him off the throne. Therefore he has retained his watchfulness and his cunning. However, he’s querulous and he’s grudging. Whereas across the border in Pontus is a man hardly thirty—vigorous, intelligent, aggressive and cocksure. No, Nicomedes can hardly be expected to give Mithridates his due, can he?”
“Hardly,” agreed Marius. “I think we can be justified in assuming that if they do come to open blows, it will be an unequal contest. Nicomedes has only just managed to hang on to what he had at the beginning of his reign, while Mithridates is a conqueror. Oh yes, Lucius Cornelius, I must see this Mithridates!” He lay back on his left elbow and gazed at Sulla anxiously. “Come with me, Lucius Cornelius, do! What’s the alternative? Another boring year in Rome, especially with Piggle-wiggle prating in the Senate, while the Piglet takes all the credit for bringing his tata home.”
But Sulla shook his head. “No, Gaius Marius.”
“I hear,” said Rutilius Rufus, nibbling the side of his fingernail idly, “that the official letter recalling Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle from his exile in Rhodes is signed by the senior consul, Metellus Nepos, and none other than the Piglet, if you please! Of the tribune of the plebs Quintus Calidius, who obtained the recall decree, not a mention! Signed by a very junior senator who is a privatus into the bargain!”
Marius laughed. “Poor Quintus Calidius! I hope the Piglet paid him handsomely for doing all the work.” He looked at Rutilius Rufus. “They don’t change much over the years, do they, the clan Caecilius Metellus? When I was a tribune of the plebs, they treated me like dirt too.”
“Deservedly,” said Rutilius Rufus. “All you did was to make life hard for every Caecilius Metellus in politics at that time! And after they thought they had you in their toils, at that! Oh, how angry was Dalmaticus!”
At the sound of that name Sulla flinched, was conscious of a flush mounting to his cheeks. Her father, Piggle-wiggle’s dead older brother. How was she, Dalmatica? What had Scaurus done to her? From the day Scaurus had come to see him at his home, Sulla had never set eyes on her. Rumor had it she was forbidden ever to leave Scaurus’s house again. “By the way,” he said loudly, “I heard from an impeccable source that there’s going to be a marriage of great convenience fo
r the Piglet.”
Reminiscences stopped at once.
“I haven’t heard about it!” said Rutilius Rufus, a little put out; he considered his sources the best in Rome.
“It’s true nevertheless, Publius Rutilius.”
“So tell me!”
Sulla popped an almond into his mouth and munched for a moment before speaking. “Good wine, Gaius Marius,” he said, filling his cup from the flagon placed close at hand when the servants had been dismissed. Slowly Sulla added water to the wine.
“Oh, put him out of his misery, Lucius Cornelius, do!” sighed Marius. “Publius Rutilius is the biggest old gossip in the Senate.”
“I agree that he is, but you must admit it made for highly entertaining letters while we were in Africa and Gaul,” said Sulla, smiling.
“Who?” cried Rutilius Rufus, not about to be deflected.
“Licinia Minor, younger daughter of none other than our urban praetor, Lucius Licinius Crassus Orator himself.’’
“You’re joking!” gasped Rutilius Rufus.
“No, I’m not.”
“But she can’t be old enough!”
“Sixteen the day before the wedding, I hear.”
“Abominable!” growled Marius, eyebrows interlocked.
“Oh really, it’s getting beyond all justification!” said Rutilius Rufus, genuinely concerned. “Eighteen is the proper age, and not a day before should it be! We’re Romans, not oriental cradle snatchers!”
“Well, at least the Piglet is only in his early thirties,” said Sulla casually. “What about Scaurus’s wife?”
“The least said about that, the better!” snapped Publius Rutilius Rufus. His temper died. “Mind you, one has to admire Crassus Orator. There’s no shortage of money for dowries in that family, but just the same, he’s done very well with his girls. The older one gone to Scipio Nasica, no less, and now the younger one to the Piglet, only son and heir of. I thought that Licinia was bad enough, at seventeen married to a brute like Scipio Nasica. She’s pregnant, you know.”
Marius clapped his hands for the steward. “Go home, both of you! When the conversation degenerates to nothing more than old women’s gossipy tidbits, we’ve exhausted all other avenues. Pregnant! You ought to be down in the nursery with the women, Publius Rutilius!”
*
All the children had been brought to Marius’s house for this dinner, and all were asleep when the party broke up. Only Young Marius remained where he was; the others had to be taken home by their parents. Two big litters stood outside in the lane, one to accommodate Sulla’s children, Cornelia Sulla and Young Sulla, the other for Aurelia’s three, Julia Major called Lia, Julia Minor called Ju-ju, and Young Caesar. While the adult men and women stood talking low-voiced in the atrium, a team of servants carried the sleeping children out to the litters and placed them carefully inside.
The man carrying Young Caesar looked unfamiliar to Julia, automatically counting; then she stiffened, clutched Aurelia by the arm convulsively.
“That’s Lucius Decumius!” she gasped.
“Of course it is,” said Aurelia, surprised.
“Aurelia, you really shouldn’t!”
“Nonsense, Julia. Lucius Decumius is a tower of strength to me. I don’t have a nice respectable journey home, as you well know. I go through the middle of a den of thieves, footpads, the gods know what—for even after seven years, I don’t! It isn’t often that I’m lured out of my own home, but when I am, Lucius Decumius and a couple of his brothers always come to bring me home. And Young Caesar isn’t a heavy sleeper. Yet when Lucius Decumius picks him up, he never stirs.”
“A couple of his brothers!” whispered Julia, horrified.
“Do you mean to say that there are more at home like Lucius Decumius?”
“No!” said Aurelia scornfully. “I mean his brothers in the crossroads college—his minions, Julia.” She looked cross. “Oh, I don’t know why I come to these family dinners on the rare occasions when I do come! Why is it that you never seem to understand that I have my life very nicely under control, and don’t need all this fussing and clucking?”
Julia said no more until she and Gaius Marius went to bed, having settled the household down, banished the slaves to their quarters, locked the door onto the street, and made an offering to the trio of gods who looked after every Roman home—Vesta of the hearth, the Di Penates of the storage cupboards, and the Lar Familiaris of the family.
“Aurelia was very difficult today,” she said then.
Marius was tired, a sensation he experienced a great deal more often these days than of yore, and one which shamed him. So rather than do what he longed to do—namely to roll over on his left side and go to sleep—he lay on his back, settled his wife within his left arm, and resigned himself to a chat about women and domestic problems. “Oh?” he asked.
“Can’t you bring Gaius Julius home? Aurelia is growing into an old retired Vestal Virgin, all—I don’t know! Sour. Crabby. Juiceless! Yes, that’s the right word, juiceless,” said Julia. “And that child is wearing her out.”
“Which child?” mumbled Marius.
“Her twenty-two-month-old son, Young Caesar. Oh, Gaius Marius, he is astonishing! I know such children are born occasionally, but I’ve certainly never met one before, nor even heard of one among our friends. I mean, all we mothers are happy if our sons know what dignitas and auctoritas are after their fathers have taken them for their first trip to the Forum at age seven! Yet this little mite knows already, though he’s never even met his father! I tell you, husband, Young Caesar is truly an astonishing child.”
She was warming up; another thought occurred to her, of sufficient moment to make her wriggle, bounce up and down. “Ah! I was talking to Crassus Orator’s wife, Mucia, yesterday, and she was saying that Crassus Orator is boasting of having a client with a son like Young Caesar.’’ She dug Marius in the ribs. “You must know the family, Gaius Marius, because they come from Arpinum.”
He hadn’t really followed any of this, but the elbow had completed what the wriggle and bounce had begun, and he was now awake enough to say, “Arpinum? Who?” Arpinum was his home, there lay the lands of his ancestors.
“Marcus Tullius Cicero. Crassus Orator’s client and the son have the same name.”
“Unfortunately I do indeed know the family. They’re some sort of cousins. Litigious-minded lot! Stole a bit of our land about a hundred years ago, won the court case. We haven’t really spoken to them since.” His eyelids fell.
“I see.” Julia cuddled closer. “Anyway, the boy is eight now, and so brilliant he’s going to study in the Forum. Crassus Orator is predicting that he’ll create quite a stir. I suppose when Young Caesar is eight, he’ll create quite a stir too.”
“Huh!” said Marius, yawning hugely.
She dug her elbow in again. “You, Gaius Marius, are going off to sleep! Wake up!”
His eyes flew open, he made a rumbling noise in the back of his throat. “Care to race me round the Capitol?” he asked.
Giggling, she settled down once more. “Well, I haven’t met this Cicero boy, but I have met my nephew, little Gaius Julius Caesar, and I can tell you, he isn’t... normal. I know we mostly reserve that word for people who are mentally defective, but I don’t see why it can’t mean the opposite as well.”
“The older you get, Julia, the more talkative you get,” complained the weary husband.
Julia ignored this. “Young Caesar isn’t two years old yet, but he’s about a hundred! Big words and properly phrased sentences—and he knows what the big words mean too!”
And suddenly Marius was wide awake, no longer tired. He lifted himself up to look at his wife, her serene face softly delineated by the little flame of a night lamp. Her nephew! Her nephew named Gaius! The Syrian Martha’s prophecy, revealed to him the first time he ever saw the crone, in Gauda’s palace at Carthage. She had predicted that he would be the First Man in Rome, and that he would be consul seven times. But, she had added,
he would not be the greatest of all Romans. His wife’s nephew named Gaius would be! And he had said to himself at the time, Over my dead body. No one is going to eclipse me. Now here was the child, a living fact.
He lay back again, his tiredness translated to aching limbs. Too much time, too much energy, too much passion had he put into his battle to become the First Man in Rome, to stand by tamely and see the luster of his name dimmed by a precocious aristocrat who would come into his own when he, Gaius Marius, was too old or too dead to oppose him. Greatly though he loved his wife, humbly though he admitted that it was her aristocratic name which had procured him that first consulship, still he would not willingly see her nephew, blood of her blood, rise higher than he himself had.
Of consulships he had won six, which meant there was a seventh yet to come. No one in Roman public life seriously believed that Gaius Marius could ever regain his past glory, those halcyon years when the Centuries had voted him in, three times in absentia, as a pledge of their conviction that he, Gaius Marius, was the only man who could save Rome from the Germans. Well, he had saved them. And what thanks had he got? A landslide of opposition, disapproval, destructiveness. The ongoing enmity of Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar, of Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle, of a huge and powerful senatorial faction united in no other way than to bring down Gaius Marius. Little men with big names, appalled at the idea that their beloved Rome had been saved by a despised New Man—an Italian hayseed with no Greek, as Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle had put it many years before.
Well, it wasn’t over yet. Stroke or no stroke, Gaius Marius would be consul a seventh time—and go down in the history books as the greatest Roman the Republic had ever known. Nor was he going to let some beautiful, golden-haired descendant of the goddess Venus step into the history books ahead of himself—the patrician Gaius Marius was not, the Roman Gaius Marius was not.
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