Masters of Rome Boxset: First Man in Rome, the Grass Crown, Fortune's Favourites, Caesar's Women, Caesar

by Colleen McCullough

  “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 o
ne 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.”