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

by Colleen McCullough

  “This has been,” said Scaurus, “an absolutely horrible year. In fact, in spite of all our recent vicissitudes, I don’t recall a year so horrible since the last year of Gaius Gracchus’s life.”

  Marius’s tears had dried. “Then we’re overdue for it, I suppose,” he said.

  “Let us hope at least there will be no worse violence done than the murder of Memmius.”

  But Scaurus’s hope proved vain, though at first it seemed reasonable. The Senate met in the temple of Bellona and discussed the murder of Memmius; sufficient of its members had been eyewitnesses to make the guilt of Glaucia manifest.

  “However,” said Marius firmly, “Gaius Servilius must be tried for his crime. No Roman citizen can be condemned without trial unless he declares war on Rome, and that is not an issue here today.”

  “I’m afraid it is, Gaius Marius,” said Sulla, hurrying in.

  Everyone stared at him. No one spoke.

  “Lucius Appuleius and a group of men including the quaestor Gaius Saufeius have taken over the Forum Romanum,” announced Sulla. “They’ve displayed Lucius Equitius to the rabble, and Lucius Appuleius has announced that he intends to supplant the Senate and the First and Second Classes with a rule of the People administered by himself. They haven’t yet hailed him as King of Rome, but it’s being said already in every street and marketplace between here and the Forum—which means it’s being said everywhere.”

  “May I speak, Gaius Marius?” asked the Leader of the House.

  “Speak, Princeps Senatus.”

  “Our city is in crisis,” Scaurus said, low-voiced yet clear-voiced, “just as it was during the last days of Gaius Gracchus. At that time, when Marcus Fulvius and Gaius Gracchus seized upon violence as the only means of attaining their desperate ends, a debate took place within the House—did Rome need a dictator to deal with a crisis so urgent, yet so short-lived? The rest is history. The House declined to appoint a dictator. Instead, it passed what might be called its ultimate decree—the Senatus Consultum de republica defendenda. By this decree the House empowered its consuls and magistrates to defend the sovereignty of the State in any way they considered necessary, and immunized them in advance from prosecution and the tribunician veto.”

  He paused to look about him with immense seriousness. “I suggest, Conscript Fathers, that we deal with our present crisis in the same way—by a Senatus Consultum de republica defendenda.”

  “I will see a Division,” said Marius. “All those in favor will pass to my left, all those against to my right.” And moved to his left first of them all.

  No one moved to the right; the House passed its second Senatus Consultum de republica defendenda unanimously, which it had not done the first time.

  “Gaius Marius,” said Scaurus, “I am empowered by the members of this House to instruct you as Rome’s senior consul to defend the sovereignty of our State in any way you deem fit or necessary. Furthermore, I hereby declare on behalf of this House that you are not subject to the tribunician veto, and that nothing you do or order done shall be held against you for future action in a court of law. Provided that they act under your instructions, this commission together with its indemnity is extended to the junior consul, Lucius Valerius Flaccus, and all the praetors. But you, Gaius Marius, are also empowered to choose deputies from among the members of this House who do not sit as consuls or praetors, and provided these deputies act under your instructions, this commission together with its indemnity is also extended to them.” Thinking of Metellus Numidicus’s face were he present to see Gaius Marius virtually made dictator by none other than Scaurus Princeps Senatus, Scaurus shot Marius a wicked look, but managed to keep his grin on the inside. He filled his lungs with air, and bellowed, “Long live Rome!”

  “Oh, my stars!” said Publius Rutilius Rufus.

  But Marius had no time or patience with the wits of the House, who would, he thought, wittify while Rome burned around them. Voice crisp yet calm, he proceeded to depute Lucius Cornelius Sulla to act as his second-in-command, ordered the store of weapons in the basement of the temple of Bellona to be broken out and distributed to those who lacked personal arms and armor, and told those who did own arms and armor to go home and get it while they could still move freely through the streets.

  Sulla concentrated upon his young bloods, sending them flying in all directions, Caepio Junior and Metellus Piglet the most eager of all. Incredulity was giving way to an outrage almost too great for mere anger; that a senator of Rome would attempt to seize rabble-fueled power in order to set himself up as a king was anathema. Political differences were forgotten, mere factions dissolved; ultra-conservatives lined up shoulder to shoulder with the most progressive Marians, all with their faces set obdurately against the wolfshead in the Forum Romanum.

  Even as he organized his little army and those awaiting arms and armor from their houses bustled mouthing imprecations here and there, Sulla remembered her; not Dalmatica, but Aurelia. He sent four lictors on the double to her insula with a message to her to bar herself in, and a message to Lucius Decumius to make sure neither he nor his tavernload of operators were in the Forum Romanum for the next few days. Knowing Lucius Decumius, they wouldn’t be in the Forum anyway; while the rest of Rome’s rabble were rampaging up and down the Forum making noise and beating up innocent passers-by, the territory they normally patrolled was delightfully open to a raid or two, and no doubt that had been Lucius Decumius’s choice. Even so, a message couldn’t hurt, and Aurelia’s safety he cared about.

  Two hours later everything and everyone was ready. Outside the temple of Bellona was the big open courtyard always known as Enemy Territory. Halfway down the temple steps was a square stone pillar about four feet high. When a just and rightful war was declared upon a foreign enemy—and were there any other kinds of wars?—a special fetial priest was called upon to hurl a spear from the steps of the temple over the exact top of the ancient stone pillar into the earth of Enemy Territory. No one knew how or why the ritual had started, but it was a part of tradition, and so it was still observed. But today there was no foreign enemy upon whom to declare war, just a senatorial decree to obey; so no fetial priest hurled a spear, and Enemy Territory was filled with Romans of the First and Second Classes.

  The whole gathering—perhaps a thousand strong—was now girt for war, chests and backs encased in cuirasses, a few sporting greaves upon their shins, most also clad in leather undersuits flapping fringed pteryges as kilts and sleeves, and all wearing crested helmets. No one carried a spear; all were armed with the good Roman short-sword and dagger, and old-fashioned pre-Marian oval shields five feet high.

  Gaius Marius stepped to the front of the Bellona podium and spoke to his little army. “Remember that we are Romans and we are entering the city of Rome,” he said gravely. “We will step across the pomerium. For that reason I will not call the marines of Marcus Antonius to arms. We ourselves can deal with this, we do not need a professional army. I am adamantly set against any more violence than is absolutely necessary, and I warn all of you most solemnly—the young among you particularly—that no blade is to be raised against a man with no blade. Take clubs and billets upon your shields, and use the flats of your swords only. Where possible, wrest a wooden weapon from one of the crowd, sheath your sword, and use wood. There will be no heaps of dead and dying in the heart of Rome! That would break the Republic’s good luck, and then the Republic would be no more. All we have to do today is avert violence, not make it.

  “You are my troops,” he went on sternly, “but few among you have served under me in any army until this one. So take heed of this, my only warning. Those who disobey my orders or the orders of my legates will be killed. This is not an occasion for factions. Today there are no types of Romans. Just Romans. There are many among you who have no love for the Head Count and Rome’s other lowly. But I say to you—and mark me well!—that a Head Count Roman is a Roman, and his life is as sacred and protected by the law as my life is, or your live
s are. There will be no bloodbath! If I see so much as the start of one, I will be down there with my sword raised against those raising swords—and under the conditions of the Senate’s decree, your heirs cannot exact retribution of any kind from me should I kill you! You will take your orders from only two men—from me, and from Lucius Cornelius Sulla here. Not from any other curule magistrate empowered under this decree. I want no attack unless I call for it or Lucius Cornelius calls for it. We do this thing as gently as we can. Understood?”

  Catulus Caesar tugged his forelock in mock obsequiousness. “We hear and obey, Gaius Marius. I have served under you before—I know you mean what you say.”

  “Good!” said Marius cordially, ignoring the sarcasm. He turned to his junior consul. “Lucius Valerius, take fifty men and go to the Quirinal. If Gaius Servilius Glaucia is at the house of Gaius Claudius, arrest him. If he refuses to come out, you and your men will remain on guard without attempting to get inside. And keep me informed.”

  *

  It was early afternoon when Gaius Marius led his little army out of Enemy Territory and into the city through the Carmentalis Gate. Coming from the Velabrum, they appeared out of the alleyway which led between the temple of Castor and the Basilica Sempronia, and took the crowd in the lower Forum completely by surprise. Armed with whatever they could lay their hands upon—cudgels, clubs, billets, knives, axes, picks, pitchforks—Saturninus’s men had swelled to perhaps four thousand in number; but compared to the competent thousand who marched tightly packed into the Forum and formed up in front of the Basilica Sempronia, they were a paltry gang. One look at the breastplates, helmets, and swords of the newcomers was enough to send almost half of them running headlong up the Argiletum and the eastern side of the Forum toward the anonymity of the Esquiline and the safety of home ground.

  “Lucius Appuleius, give this up!” roared Marius, in the forefront of his force with Sulla beside him.

  Atop the rostra with Saufeius, Labienus, Equitius, and some ten others, Saturninus stared at Marius slack-jawed; then he threw back his head and laughed; meant to sound confident and defiant, it came out hollow.

  “Your orders, Gaius Marius?” Sulla asked.

  “We take them in a charge,” said Marius. “Very sudden, very hard. No swords drawn, just shields to the front. I never thought they’d be such a motley lot, Lucius Cornelius! They’ll break easily.”

  Sulla and Marius went round their little army and readied it, shields swung to the front, a line of men two hundred long, and five men deep.

  And then: “Charge!” shrieked Gaius Marius.

  The maneuver was immediately effective. A solid wall of shields carried at a run hit the rabble like an enormous wave of water. Men and makeshift weapons flew everywhere and not a retaliatory blow was struck; then before Saturninus’s men could organize themselves better, the wall of shields crashed into them again, and again.

  Saturninus and his companions came down from the rostra to join the fray, brandishing naked swords. To no effect. Though they had started out thirsting for real blood, Marius’s cohort was now enjoying the novelty of this battering-ram approach, and had got into a rhythm which kept cannoning into the disordered rabble, pushing its men up like stones into a heap, drawing off to form the wall again, cannoning again. A few of the rabble were trampled underfoot, but nothing like a battle developed; it was a debacle instead.

  Only a short time elapsed before Saturninus’s entire force was fleeing the field; the great occupation of the Forum Romanum was over, and almost bloodlessly. Saturninus, Labienus, Saufeius, Equitius, a dozen Romans, and some thirty armed slaves ran up the Clivus Capitolinus to barricade themselves inside the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, calling upon the Great God to give them succor and send that gigantic crowd back into the Forum.

  “Blood will flow now!” screamed Saturninus from the podium of the temple atop the Capitol, his words clearly audible to Marius and his men. “I will make you kill Romans before I am done, Gaius Marius! I will see this temple polluted with the blood of Romans!’’

  “He might be right,” said Scaurus Princeps Senatus, looking extremely satisfied and happy in spite of this fresh worry.

  Marius laughed heartily. “No! He’s posturing like one of those defenseless little animals plumed with fierce-looking eyes, Marcus Aemilius. There’s a simple answer to this siege, believe me. We’ll have them out of there without spilling one drop of Roman blood.” He turned to Sulla. “Lucius Cornelius, find the city water company engineers, and have them cut off all water to the Capitoline Hill at once.”

  The Leader of the House shook his head in wonder. “So simple! But so obvious I for one would never have seen it. How long will we have to wait for Saturninus to surrender?”

  “Not long. They’ve been engaged in thirsty work, you see. Tomorrow is my guess. I’m going to send enough men up there to ring the temple round, and I’m going to order them to taunt our fugitives remorselessly with their lack of water.”

  “Saturninus is a very desperate character,” said Scaurus.

  That was a judgment Marius disagreed with, and said so. “He’s a politician, Marcus Aemilius, not a soldier. It’s power he’s come to understand, not force of arms, and he can’t make a workable strategy for himself.” The twisted side of Marius’s face came round to frighten Scaurus, its drooping eye ironic, and the smile which pulled the good side of his face up was a terrible thing to see. “If I was in Saturninus’s shoes, Marcus Aemilius, you’d have cause to worry! Because by now I’d be calling myself the King of Rome, and you would all be dead.”

  Scaurus Princeps Senatus stepped back a pace instinctively. “I know, Gaius Marius,” he said. “I know!”

  “Anyway,” said Marius cheerfully, removing the awful side of his face from Scaurus’s view, “luckily I’m not King Tarquinius, though my mother’s family is from Tarquinia! A night in the same room as the Great God will bring Saturninus round.”

  Those in the rabble who had been caught and detained when it broke and fled were rounded up and put under heavy guard in the cells of the Lautumiae, where a scurrying group of censor’s clerks sorted out the Roman citizens from the non-Romans; those who were not Romans were to be executed immediately, while the Romans would be summarily tried on the morrow, and flung down from the Tarpeian Rock of the Capitol straight after.

  Sulla returned as Marius and Scaurus began to walk away from the lower Forum.

  “I have a message from Lucius Valerius on the Quirinal,’’ he said, looking considerably fresher for the day’s events. “He says Glaucia is there inside Gaius Claudius’s house all right, but they’ve barred the gates and refuse to come out.”

  Marius looked at Scaurus. “Well, Princeps Senatus, what will we do about that situation?”

  “Like the lot in the company of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, why not leave matters lie overnight? Let Lucius Valerius guard the house in the meantime. After Saturninus surrenders, we can have the news shouted over Gaius Claudius’s wall, and then see what happens.”

  “A good plan, Marcus Aemilius.”

  And Scaurus began to laugh. “All this amicable concourse with you, Gaius Marius, is not going to enhance my reputation among my friends the Good Men!” he spluttered, and caught at Marius’s arm. “Nonetheless, Good Man, I am very glad we had you here today. What say you, Publius Rutilius?”

  “I say—you could not have spoken truer words.”

  *

  Lucius Appuleius Saturninus was the first of all those in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus to surrender; Gaius Saufeius was the last. The Romans among them, some fifteen altogether, were detained on the rostra in full view of all who cared to come and see—not many, for the crowd stayed home. Under their eyes those among the rabble who were Roman citizens—almost all, for this was not a slave uprising—were tried in a specially convened treason court, and sentenced to die from the Tarpeian Rock.

  Jutting out from the southwest side of the Capitol, the Tarpeian Rock was a basalti
c overhang above a precipice only eighty feet in height; that it killed was due to the presence of an outcrop of needle-sharp rocks immediately below.

  The traitors were led up the slope of the Clivus Capitolinus, past the steps of the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, to a spot on the Servian Walls in front of the temple of Ops. The overhang of the Tarpeian Rock projected out of the wall, and was clearly visible in profile from the lower part of the Forum Romanum, where crowds suddenly appeared to watch the partisans of Lucius Appuleius Saturninus go to their deaths—crowds with empty bellies, but no desire to demonstrate their displeasure on this day. They just wanted to see men thrown off the Tarpeian Rock, for it hadn’t happened in a long time, and the gossip grapevine had told them there were almost a hundred to die. No eyes in that crowd rested upon Saturninus or Equitius with love or pity, though every element in it was the same who cheered them mightily during the tribunician elections. The gossip grapevine was saying there were grain fleets on the way from Asia, thanks to Gaius Marius. So it was Gaius Marius they cheered in a desultory way; what they really wanted to see, for this was a Roman holiday of sorts, was the bodies pitched from the Tarpeian Rock. Death at a decent distance, an acrobatic display, a novelty.

  *

  “We can’t hold the trials of Saturninus and Equitius until feelings have died down a little,” said Scaurus Princeps Senatus to Marius and Sulla as the three of them stood on the Senate Steps while the parade of flailing miniature men dropped into space off the end of the Tarpeian Rock.

  Neither Marius nor Sulla mistook his meaning; it was not the Forum crowd which worried Scaurus, but the more impulsive and angry among his own kind, growling more fiercely now that the worst was over. Rancor had shifted from Saturninus’s rabble to Saturninus himself, with special viciousness reserved for Lucius Equitius. The young senators and those not quite old enough to be senators were standing in a group on the edge of the Comitia with Caepio Junior and Metellus Piglet in their forefront, eyeing Saturninus and his companions on the rostra very hungrily.