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

by Colleen McCullough

  If only he had been gifted with generalship! thought King Mithridates to himself, while his brown-flecked grape-green eyes roamed unseeingly over the faces of the men around him. But in that area, the heroic talents passed down to him from his ancestor Herakles had failed. Or had they? Come to think of it, Herakles had not been a general! Herakles had worked alone—against lions and bears, usurping kings, gods and goddesses, chthonic dogs, all manner of monsters. The sort of adversaries Mithridates himself might welcome. In the days of Herakles, generals had not been invented; warriors banded together, met other bands of warriors, got down from the chariots they seemed to tool everywhere, and fought hand-to-hand duels. Now that was the kind of war the King felt himself qualified to wage! But those days were gone forever, just like the chariots. Modern times were army times; generals were demigods who sat or stood somewhere elevated above the field and pointed, and gave orders, and nibbled reflectively at a hangnail while their eyes were busy, busy, overseeing each and every movement below. Generals seemed instinctively to know where the line was about to flag or fall back, where the Enemy was going to concentrate for a mass assault—and generals were born already understanding flanks, maneuvers, sieges, artillery, relief columns, formations, deployments, rank from file. All things Mithridates could not cope with, had no feeling for, interest in, talent at.

  And while his eyes roved sightlessly, everyone who watched the King watched him more closely than a hovering falcon the mouse in the grass below—not feeling like the falcon, but like the mouse. There he sat upon his chair of solid gold inlaid with a million pearls and rubies, clad (since this was a war council) in lion skin and a shirt of the softest, most flexible mail, every knitted link plated with gold. Glittering. Striking fear into every heart. No one stood against the King, no one knew how he stood with the King. Complete ruler of men, complex mixture of coward and braggart and groveler, savior and destroyer. In Rome, no one would have believed him, and everyone would have laughed. In Sinope, everyone believed him, and no one laughed.

  Finally the King spoke. “Whoever this Lucius Cornelius Sulla is, the Romans have sent him without an army to garrison a strange land and employ troops unfamiliar to him. Therefore I must assume this Lucius Cornelius Sulla is a worthy foe.” He let his eyes rest upon Gordius. “How many of my soldiers did I send to your kingdom of Cappadocia in the autumn?”

  “Fifty thousand, Great King,” said Gordius.

  “In the early spring I will come to Eusebeia Mazaca myself, with a further fifty thousand. Neoptolemus will come with me as my general. Archelaus, you will go to Galatia with fifty thousand more men and garrison that place on its western border, in case the Romans are actually planning to invade Pontus on two fronts. My Queen will govern from Amaseia, but her sons will remain here in Sinope under guard, hostages against her good behavior. If she should plan anything treasonous, all her sons will be executed immediately,” said King Mithridates.

  “My daughter does not dream of such things!” cried Gordius, aghast, worried that one of the King’s minor wives would manufacture a treason which would see his grandsons dead before the truth could be established.

  “I have no reason to suppose she does,” said the King. “It is a precaution I always take these days. When I am out of my own lands, the children of each of my wives are taken to a different city, and held against each wife’s conduct in my absence. Women are odd cattle,” the King went on thoughtfully. “They always seem to prize their children ahead of themselves.”

  “You had better guard yourself against the one who does not,” said a thin and simpering voice which emanated from a fat and simpering person.

  “I do, Socrates, I do,” said Mithridates with a grin. He had developed a liking for this repellent client from Bithynia, if for no other reason than he could point with pride to the fact that no brother of his so repellent could possibly have survived into his late fifties. That no brother of his had survived to see twenty, repellent or not, was something he never bothered to think about. A soft lot, the Bithynians. If it hadn’t been for Rome and Roman protection, Bithynia would have been gulped into the maw of Pontus a generation ago. Rome, Rome, Rome! Always it came back to Rome. Why couldn’t Rome find a terrible war at the other end of the Middle Sea to keep her occupied for a decade or so? Then, by the time she managed to turn her eyes eastward again, Pontus would reign supreme, and Rome would have no choice but to confine her attentions to the west. The setting sun.

  “Gordius, I leave it to you to watch how this Lucius Cornelius Sulla goes about things in Cilicia. Keep me informed about every last detail! Nothing must escape you. Is that clear?”

  Gordius shivered. “Yes, Almighty One.”

  “Good!” The King yawned. “I’m hungry. We’ll eat.” But when Gordius moved to accompany the group to the dining room, the King balked. “Not you!” he said sharply. “You go back to Mazaca. At once. Cappadocia must be seen to have a king.”

  *

  Unfortunately for Mithridates, the spring weather favored Sulla. The pass through the Cilician Gates was lower and the snow less deep than the series of three passes through which Mithridates had to move those extra fifty thousand men from their camp outside Zela to the foot of Mount Argaeus. Gordius had already sent word all the way to Sinope that Sulla and his army were moving before the King could hope to traverse his mountainous barriers. So when further word came as the King was setting out from Zela that Sulla had arrived in Cappadocia and was putting his men into camp some four hundred stades south of Mazaca and four hundred stades west of Cappadocian Comana— and seemed content to be doing this—the King breathed easier.

  Even so, he hustled his army through the treacherous terrain, indifferent to the plight of men and animals, his officers ready with the lash to goad the driven on, equally ready with the boot to shove the hopeless out of the way. Couriers had already gone east to Armenian Artaxata and the King’s son-in-law Tigranes, warning him that Cilicia was now garrisoned by the Romans, and that a Roman governor was on the prowl in Cappadocia. Alarmed, Tigranes thought it best to notify his Parthian masters of this fact and wait for orders from Seleuceia-on-Tigris before he did anything at all. Mithridates hadn’t asked for aid, but Tigranes had got his measure long since, and wasn’t sure he wanted to face Rome, whether Mithridates did or not.

  When the King of Pontus reached the Halys, crossed it, and put his fifty thousand men into camp alongside the fifty thousand who already occupied Mazaca, he was met by Gordius, big with the most extraordinary news.

  “The Roman is busy building a road!”

  The King stopped, absolutely still. “A road?”

  “Through the pass of the Cilician Gates, O Great One.”

  “But there’s a road already,” said Mithridates.

  “I know, I know!”

  “Then why build another?”

  “I don’t know!”

  The full red lips enclosing the small mouth pursed smaller, curled outward, worked inward, giving Mithridates, had he known it (or had some had the courage to tell him, which no one ever did), a distinct resemblance to a fish; this activity continued for some moments, then the King shrugged. “They love building roads,” he said in tones of puzzled wonder. ‘ ‘I suppose it might be a way to fill in time.” His face became ugly. “After all, he got here a lot faster than I did!”

  “About the road, Great King,” said Neoptolemus delicately.

  “What about it?”

  “I think it may turn out to be that Lucius Cornelius Sulla is improving the road. The better the road, the quicker he can move his troops. That’s why the Romans build good roads.”

  “But he marched up the existing road without changing it then—why build it anew after he’s traveled it?” cried Mithridates, who did not begin to understand; men were expendable, the lash got them there as long as there was some kind of track. Why bother to make the way as easy as a stroll through town?

  “I imagine,” said Neoptolemus with exquisite patience, “that,
having experienced the condition of the existing road, the Roman decided to improve it in case he ever has to use it again.”

  That penetrated. The King’s eyes bulged. “Well, he’s due for a surprise! After I’ve thrown him and his Cilician mercenaries out of Cappadocia, I won’t bother to tear up his new road—I’ll tear the mountains down on top of it instead!”

  “Splendidly expressed, Great One,” fawned Gordius.

  The King grunted contemptuously. He moved toward his horse, stepped upon a kneeling slave’s back, and settled himself in the saddle. Without waiting to see who was ready to follow, he kicked the animal in its sides, and galloped off. Gordius scrambled into his own saddle and pursued the King, bleating, leaving Neoptolemus standing watching them recede into the distance.

  Very difficult getting foreign ideas into the King’s head, thought Neoptolemus. Has he grasped the point of the road? Why does he not see it? I do! We’re both Pontines, neither of us was educated abroad, our backgrounds are similar as far as blood goes. In actual fact, his is the richer exposure to various places. Yet he can be so blind to the significance of some things I see at once. Though other things he sees more quickly than I do. Different minds, I suppose. Different ways of thinking. Perhaps when a man is a complete autocrat, his mind shifts in some way? He is no fool, my cousin Mithridates. A pity then that he understands the Romans so little. Much as he would deny the charge vigorously, he isn’t even interested in understanding the Romans. Most of his conclusions about them are based on his bizarre adventures in Asia Province, and that is not the excellent background he thinks it is. How can the rest of us make him see what we see?

  *

  The King’s stay in the blue palace at Eusebeia Mazaca was brief; on the day following his arrival he led his army out in Sulla’s direction, all hundred thousand soldiers. No need to worry about roads here! Though there was an occasional hill to climb and the outlandish gorges of tufa towers to skirt round, the way was easy for men on the march. Mithridates was satisfied with his progress, one hundred and sixty stades in the day; not unless he had seen it through his own eyes would he have believed that a Roman army marching across the same roadless terrain could have covered over twice that distance without being really extended.

  But Sulla didn’t move. His camp lay in the midst of a huge expanse of flat ground and he had used his time in fortifying it formidably, despite the fact that the Cappadocian lack of forests had meant fetching the timber from the Cilician Gates. Thus when Mithridates came over the horizon he saw a structure, perfectly square, enclosing a space some thirty-two square stades in area within massive embankments, topped by a spiked palisade ten feet high, and having in front of its walls three ditches, the outermost twenty feet wide and filled with water, the middle one fifteen feet wide and filled with sharpened stakes, and the innermost twenty feet wide and filled with water. There were, his scouts informed him, four paths across the ditches, one to each of the four gates, which were placed in the center of each side of the square.

  It was the first time in his life that Mithridates had seen a Roman camp. He wanted to gape, but could not because there were too many eyes upon him. That he could take it he was sure—but at enormous cost. So he sat his vast army down and rode out himself to look at Sulla’s fortress at close quarters.

  “My lord King, a herald from the Romans,” said one of his officers, coming to find him as he rode slowly along one side of Sulla’s admirably engineered stronghold.

  “What do they want?” asked Mithridates, frowning at the wall and the palisade, the tall watchtowers which marched along it at frequent intervals.

  “The proconsul Lucius Cornelius Sulla requests a parley.”

  “I agree to that. Where, and when?”

  “On the path leading to the Roman camp’s front gate— that path to your right, Great King. Just you and he, the herald says.”

  “When?”

  “Now, Great One.”

  The King kicked his horse to the right, eager to see this Lucius Cornelius Sulla, and not at all afraid; nothing he had heard about Romans suggested the kind of treachery that would, under a truce, fell him with a spear as he walked unguarded to a rendezvous. So when he reached the path he slid down from his horse without thinking things through, and stopped, annoyed at his own obtuseness. He mustn’t let a Roman do to him again what Gaius Marius had done to him—look down on him! Back onto the horse he climbed. He would look down on Lucius Cornelius Sulla! But the horse refused to tread this roadway, eyes rolling white at sight of the perilous ditches on either side. For a moment the King fought the animal, then decided this would harm his image even more. Back he came, back off the horse he slid, and now he walked alone to its middle, where the ditches literally stuffed with sharpened pointed stakes yawned like mouths full of teeth.

  The gate opened, a man slid round it and walked toward him. Quite a little fellow compared to his own splendid height, the King was pleased to see—but very well put together. The Roman was clad in a plain steel cuirass shaped to his torso, wore the double kilt of leather straps called pteryges, a scarlet tunic, and, flowing out behind him, a scarlet cape. Bareheaded, his red-gold hair blazed in the sun, stirred by a little wind. King Mithridates couldn’t take his eyes off it, for in all his life he had never seen hair that color, even on the Celtic Galatians. Nor such ice-white skin, visible between the hem just above the Roman’s knees and his sturdy unornamented boots midway up impressively muscled calves, visible down the length of his arms, visible on neck and face too. Ice-white! No atom of color in it!

  And then Lucius Cornelius Sulla was close enough for the King to see his face, and then he was close enough for the King to see his eyes. The King literally shivered. Apollo! Apollo in the guise of a Roman! The face was so strong, so godlike, so awful in its majesty—no smooth-faced simpering Greek statue, this, but the god as the god must surely be, so long after his creation. A man-god in the prime of his life, full of power. A Roman. A Roman!

  Sulla had gone out to this meeting completely sure of himself, for he had listened to Gaius Marius describe his own encounter with the King of Pontus; between the two of them, they had got his measure. It hadn’t occurred to him that his very appearance would throw the King off balance—nor did he, seeing this was so, understand exactly why. Exactly why didn’t matter. He simply resolved to use this unexpected advantage.

  “What are you doing in Cappadocia, King Mithridates?” he asked.

  “Cappadocia belongs to me,” the King said, but not in the roaring voice he had originally intended to use before he set eyes on the Roman Apollo; it came out rather small and weak, and he knew it, and he hated himself for it.

  “Cappadocia belongs to the Cappadocians.”

  “The Cappadocians are the same people as the Pontines.’’

  “How can that be, when they have had their own line of kings for as many hundreds of years as the Pontines?”

  “Their kings have been foreigners, not Cappadocians.”

  “In what way?”

  “They are Seleucids from Syria.”

  Sulla shrugged. “Odd, then, King Mithridates, that the Cappadocian king I have inside these camp walls behind me doesn’t look a scrap like a Seleucid from Syria. Or like you! Nor is his genealogy Syrian, Seleucid or otherwise. King Ariobarzanes is a Cappadocian, and chosen by his own people in place of your son Ariarathes Eusebes.”

  Mithridates started. Gordius had never told him Marius found out who was father to King Ariarathes Eusebes; Sulla’s statement seemed to him prescient, unnatural. Yet one more evidence of the Roman Apollo.

  “King Ariarathes Eusebes is dead, he died during the invasion of the Armenians,” said Mithridates, still in that small meek voice. “The Cappadocians now have a Cappadocian king. His name is Gordius, and I am here to ensure he remains king.”

  “Gordius is your creature, King Mithridates, as is only to be expected in a father-in-law whose daughter is the Queen of Pontus,” said Sulla evenly. “Gordius is not the
king chosen by the Cappadocians. He is the king you chose through the agency of your son-in-law Tigranes. Ariobarzanes is the rightful king.”

  Yet more inside knowledge! Who was this Lucius Cornelius Sulla, if not Apollo? “Ariobarzanes is a pretender!”

  “Not according to the Senate and People of Rome,” said Sulla, pressing his advantage. “I am here on commission from the Senate and People of Rome to ensure that King Ariobarzanes is reinstated, and that Pontus—and Armenia!—stay out of Cappadocian lands.”

  “It is no business of Rome’s!” cried the King, gathering courage as his temper frayed.

  “Everything in the world is Rome’s business,” said Sulla, and gauged the time right to strike. “Go home, King Mithridates.”

  “Cappadocia is as much my home as Pontus!”

  “No, it is not. Go home to Pontus.”

  “And are you going to make me, with your pathetic little army?” sneered the King, angry now indeed. “Look out there, Lucius Cornelius Sulla! A hundred thousand men!”

  “A hundred thousand barbarians,” said Sulla scornfully. “I’ll eat them.”

  “I’ll fight! I warn you, I’ll fight!”

  Sulla turned his shoulder, preparing to walk away, and said over it, “Oh, stop posturing and go home!” And walked away. At the gate he turned back and said more loudly, “Go home, King Mithridates. Eight days from now I march to Eusebeia Mazaca to put King Ariobarzanes back on his throne. If you oppose me, I’ll annihilate your army and kill you. Not twice the number of men I can see would stop me.”

  “You don’t even have Roman soldiers!” shouted the King.

  Sulla smiled dreadfully. “Roman enough,” he said. “They have been equipped and trained by a Roman—and they will fight like Romans, so much I promise you. Go home!”