Silo’s answer was not encouraging.
Unfortunately, Marcus Livius, I have little clout either in Umbria or Etruria. They’re an odd lot in both places, you know—very convinced of their own autonomy, and wary of Marsi. Be prepared for two incidents. One is fairly publicly bruited in the north. The other I heard of by sheer chance, and am far more concerned about.
The first incident first. The larger Etrurian and Umbrian landowners are planning to march in deputation to Rome, to protest the breaking up of the Roman ager publicus. Their excuse (of course they cannot admit they’ve been tampering with the boundaries!) is that the Roman ager publicus of Etruria and Umbria has been in existence now for so long that it has altered both the economy and the populace. To suffer an influx of smallholders, they argue, will ruin Etruria and Umbria. The towns, they argue, do not now contain the kind of shops and markets smallholders would patronize—the shops have become warehouses because latifundia owners and managers buy in bulk. Also, they argue, the latifundia proprietors would simply free their slave workers without bothering about the consequences. With the result that thousands of liberated slaves would be wandering the regions getting into trouble, perhaps robbing and marauding. Thus, they argue, it would be Etruria and Umbria would have to foot the bill to ship these slaves home. And on, and on, and on. Be prepared for the deputation!
The second incident is potentially more dangerous. Some of our hotheads from Samnium have decided there is no hope of either citizenship or peace with Rome, and are going to show Rome the depth of their discontent during the celebration of the festival of Jupiter Latiaris on the Alban Mount. They plan to murder the consuls Sextus Caesar and Philippus. The scheme is well worked out—they will fall upon the consuls as they return to Rome from Bovillae, in sufficient numbers to overcome all the celebrants on this peaceful journey.
You had better do what you can to calm down the Umbrian and Etrurian landowners, and crush the assassination attempt before it can possibly take place. More cheering news is that everyone I have approached to swear the oath of personal allegiance to you has done so with great good will. The pool of potential clients for Marcus Livius Drusus grows ever wider.
That at least was good news! Frowning, Drusus bent his mind to the less entrancing contents of Silo’s letter. About the Italians from Etruria and Umbria he could do little save compose a stunning speech for use upon their advent in the Forum. About the plan to assassinate the consuls, he had no choice but to warn the consuls. Who would then press him as to the source of his information, and not be pleased at evasive answers—especially Philippus.
Consequently Drusus decided to see Sextus Caesar rather than Philippus, and make no secret of his sources.
“I have had a letter from my friend Quintus Poppaedius Silo, the Marsian from Marruvium,” he said to Sextus Caesar. “It seems a band of Samnite malcontents have decided that the only way Rome will ever listen to reason about citizenship for all Italy is to demonstrate to Rome how determined all Italy is—through violence. You and Lucius Marcius will be attacked by a large and well-armed number of Samnites somewhere between Bovillae and Rome as you return from the Latin Festival along the Via Appia.’’
This was not one of Sextus Caesar’s good days; his wheezing breaths were quite audible, his lips and earlobes faintly blued. However, he was inured to his affliction and had managed to reach the consulship in spite of it—and ahead of his cousin Lucius Caesar, who had been praetor before him.
“I shall accord you a vote of thanks in the House, Marcus Livius,” the senior consul said, “and make sure our Princeps Senatus writes to thank Quintus Poppaedius Silo on behalf of the House.”
“Sextus Julius, I would so much rather you didn’t adopt that course!” said Drusus quickly. “Surely it would be better to say nothing to anyone, borrow a few cohorts of good troops from Capua, and try to trap and capture the Samnites? Otherwise, they will be warned that their plot is discovered, they will not carry it out, and Lucius Marcius your fellow consul is one who will disbelieve there ever was a plot. To safeguard my reputation, I would much rather see the Samnite malcontents apprehended in the act. That way, we can teach Italy a lesson by flogging and executing every last one in the gang. Telling Italy that violence will go nowhere.”
“I see your point, Marcus Livius, and will act accordingly,” said Sextus Julius Caesar.
Thus in the midst of angry Italian landowners and Samnites bent on assassination did Drusus continue his work. The Etrurians and Umbrians came, luckily so truculent and overbearing that they irritated men they might otherwise have wooed, and were dispatched home again with a flea in the ear and scant sympathy from anyone. Sextus Caesar acted exactly as Drusus had requested in respect of the assassination plan, with the result that when the Samnites attacked the peaceful-looking procession outside Bovillae, they were routed by some cohorts of legionaries concealed behind the tombs on the far side of the Via Appia; some died fighting, but many more were taken alive, flogged, executed.
What concerned Drusus was that—predictably, he supposed—his lex agraria had gone into law providing that every single Roman citizen man be allocated ten iugera from the public lands. The Senate and the rest of the First Class were to receive their parcels first, and the capite censi Head Count last of all. Though all told there were millions of iugera of public land in Italy, Drusus very much doubted that by the time the allocating of it got down as low as the Head Count, there would be much land left. And, as everyone knew, it was not wise to antagonize the Head Count. They would have to receive some other compensation in lieu of land. Only one compensation was possible—public grain at a reduced price made stable even during times of famine. Oh, what a battle it would be in the Senate to have a lex frumentaria sanctioned allowing permanently cheap grain to the Head Count!
To compound his troubles, the assassination attempt during the Latin Festival had alarmed Philippus to the point where he began to make enquiries from what friends he had throughout Italy; in May he stood up in the House and announced that Italy was restive, and some men talked of war with Rome. His demeanor was not that of a frightened man, but rather a man who felt the Italians must be given a well-deserved fright. He therefore proposed that two praetors should be deputed to travel—one to the south of Rome, the other to the north of Rome—and discover on behalf of the Senate and People of Rome just what was going on.
Catulus Caesar, who had suffered so in Aesernia during the days when he had chaired his special court of enquiry under the lex Licinia Mucia, thought this was an excellent idea. Of course senators who might not otherwise have been impressed immediately hailed Philippus’s suggestion as an excellent idea. In short order the praetor Servius Sulpicius Galba was instructed to make enquiries south of Rome, and the praetor Quintus Servilius of the Augur’s family was instructed to make enquiries north of Rome. Both men were allowed to choose a legate, they were endowed with a proconsular imperium, and given the money to travel in appropriate state, even to a small force of hired ex-gladiators to serve as bodyguards.
The news that the Senate had deputed two praetors to enquire into what Catulus Caesar insisted on calling “the Italian question” did not please Silo one little bit. Mutilus in Samnium, smarting already because of the flogging and execution of two hundred brave men on the Via Appia, was inclined to call this new indignity an act of war. Frantically Drusus wrote letter after letter to both men, pleading with them to give him a chance, to sit back and wait.
In the meantime he girded his loins for battle, and proceeded to tell the Senate of his plans to issue a cheaper grain dole. Like the allocation of the ager publicus, cheap grain could never be confined to the lowly. Any Roman citizen prepared to join the long line at the aediles’ booth in the Porticus Minucia could obtain his official chit entitling him to five modii of public wheat, then trek to the State granaries beneath the Aventine cliffs, present his chit, and cart his grain home. There were some, even of great wealth and prestige, who actually did avail thems
elves of this citizen privilege—about half because they were incurable misers, about half on principle. But on the whole, most men who could afford to drop some coins into the steward’s hand and tell him to buy grain from the privately owned granaries along the Vicus Tuscus were not prone to seek a chit in person just to have cheap grain. Compared to the costs of other aspects of living in the city of Rome—like rent, which was always relatively astronomical—the sum of fifty or a hundred sesterces a month per person for privately vended grain was minute. Thus it was that the vast majority of those who did queue to receive their chits were the needful citizens of the Fifth Class, and the Head Count.
“The land just will not extend to all of them by any means,” said Drusus in the House, “but we must not forget them, or give them reason to assume they have been overlooked yet again. Rome’s manger is sufficiently large, Conscript Fathers, to permit all of Rome’s mouths to feed at it! If we cannot give the Head Count land, then we have to give them cheap grain. At a flat price of five sesterces per modius year in and year out, irrespective of times of shortage or times of surplus. This in itself will make the financial burden somewhat easier for our Treasury to bear—when times see a surplus of wheat, the Treasury buys it for between two and four sesterces the modius. Thus by selling at five, it will still be possible for the Treasury to make a small profit, which will bolster the Treasury’s task during years of scarcity. For that reason, I suggest that a separate account be maintained within the Treasury that can only be used to purchase wheat. We must not make the mistake of dipping into the general revenues to fund this law.”
“And how, Marcus Livius, do you propose to pay for this magnificent largesse?” drawled Lucius Marcius Philip-pus.
Drusus smiled. “I have it all worked out, Lucius Marcius. As one part of my law, I intend to devalue some of our normal issues of currency.”
The House stirred, murmured; no one liked to hear the word “devaluation” mentioned, for most were intensely conservative when it came to the fiscus. It was not Roman policy to debase the coinage, the device being condemned as a Greek trick. Only during the first and second Punic wars against Carthage had it been resorted to, and then much of it was due to attempts to standardize coin weight. Radical though he was in other ways, Gaius Gracchus had increased the value of silver currency.
Nothing daunted, Drusus went on to explain. “One in every eight denarii will be cast of bronze mixed with a drop of lead to make the weight the same as a silver coin, then silver-plated. I have worked out my calculations in the most ultra-conservative way—namely, I have presumed we will have five poor grain years to every two good ones—which, as you all know, is far too pessimistic. In fact, we enjoy more good years than we do bad. However, one cannot exclude another period of famine like that we endured thanks to the Sicilian slave war. Also, there is more work involved in silver-plating a coin than there is in stamping out pure silver. Consequently I costed my program out at one in every eight denarii, whereas the true figure is more likely to be one in every ten. The Treasury, you perceive, cannot lose. Nor will the measure be burdensome to businessmen who negotiate with paper. The major load will fall upon those limited to using coins, and—the most important factor of all, in my opinion—it avoids the odium of a form of direct taxation.”
“Why go to the trouble of plating one in every eight coins in each issue when you could simply plate one in every eight issues?” asked the praetor Lucius Lucilius, who was (like all his family) very clever with words, but an absolute dunce at arithmetic and practicalities.
“Because,” said Drusus patiently, “it is, I think, vital that most of those using coins not be able to tell the real from the plated. If a whole issue were to be cast in bronze, no one would be willing to spend them.”
Miraculous though it seemed, Drusus got his lex frumentaria. Lobbied by the Treasury (which had done its sums and come out with the same answers Drusus produced, and seen how profitable this debasement might be), the Senate sanctioned its promulgation in the Plebeian Assembly. In that body the most powerful knights were quick to understand how little it would bother them in all transactions not requiring cash. Of course everyone knew it affected everyone, that the distinction between real money and pieces of paper was at best specious; but they were pragmatists, and knew full well that the only true value money of any kind had was the faith of the people who used it, in it.
By the end of June the law was on the tablets. The public grain in all future years was to be sold at five sesterces the modius, and the quaestors attached to the Treasury were planning their first issue of debased coins, as were the viri monetales who would supervise the actual minting. It would take a little time, of course, but the concerned officials estimated that by September one in every eight new denarii would be silver-plated. There were grumblings. Caepio never ceased to shout his protests, the knights were not entirely happy with the way Drusus was heading, and Rome’s lowly suspected that they were being fobbed off in some way their rulers had not divulged. But Drusus was no Saturninus, and the Senate was grateful for it. When he held a contio in the Plebeian Assembly, he insisted upon decorum and legality; if either became at risk, he suspended his meeting at once. Nor did he fly in the face of the augurs, or employ strong-arm tactics.
The end of June saw an enforced cessation in Drusus’s program, as official summer had arrived; the Senate broke off its meetings, as did the Comitia. Glad of the respite— he found himself increasingly fatigued by less and less activity—Drusus too quit Rome. His mother and the six children in her care he sent to his sumptuous villa on the sea at Misenum, while he traveled first to see Silo, then Mutilus, and accompanied both of them all over Italy.
He couldn’t help but notice that the Italian nations of the central peninsula were ready to put themselves on a war footing; as he rode down some dusty track with Silo and Mutilus, he saw whole legions of well-equipped troops engaged in training maneuvers far from Roman or Latin settlements. But he said nothing, asked no questions, believing implicitly that none of this martial practice would be needed. In an unprecedented spate of legislation, he had succeeded in convincing the Senate and the Plebeian Assembly that reform was necessary in the major law courts, the Senate, the ager publicus, and the grain dole. No one—not Tiberius Gracchus, Gaius Gracchus, Gaius Marius, or Saturninus— had done what he had done, introduce so much contentious, legislation without violence, senatorial opposition, knight rejection. Because they believed him, they respected him, they trusted him. He knew now that when he made his intentions public about general enfranchisement for Italy, they would let him lead them, even if they did not precisely follow him. It would be done! And as a consequence he, Marcus Livius Drusus, would hold one quarter of the population of the Roman world as his clients, for the oath of personal allegiance to him had been sworn from one end of the Italian peninsula to the other, even in Umbria and Etruria.
*
About eight days before the Senate reconvened on the Kalends of September, Drusus arrived at his villa in Misenum to enjoy a little rest before the hardest work began. His mother, he had discovered, was as great a joy to him as she was a comfort—witty, clever, well read, easygoing, almost masculine in her appreciation of what was, after all, a man’s world. She took a keen interest in politics, and had followed Drusus’s program of laws with pride and pleasure. Her liberal Cornelian background predisposed her to a certain radicalism, yet the essential conservatism of that same Cornelian background approved of her son’s masterly grasp on the realities of Senate and People. No force or violence, no battering ram of threats, no other weapons than a golden voice and a silver tongue. That was what great politicians should be! That was how Marcus Livius Drusus was, and she congratulated herself that he never got it from his pigheaded, stiff-necked, misunderstanding father. No, he got it from her.
“Well, you’ve dealt brilliantly with the law, the land, and the lowly,” she said neatly. “What next, if anything?”
He drew a breath, looked a
t her directly, sternly. “I will legislate the full Roman citizenship for every last man in Italy.”
Paler than her bone-colored dress, she cried, “Oh, Marcus Livius! They’ve let you have your way so far, but they won’t let you have your way in this!”
“Why not?” he asked, surprised; he had got quite used to thinking these days that he could do what no one else could do.
“The guarding of the citizenship has become a task given to Rome by the gods,” she said, still pallid. “Not if Quirinus himself appeared in the middle of the Forum and ordered them to dole it out to everyone, would they consent!” Out went her hand to grasp his arm. “Marcus Livius, Marcus Livius, give it up! Don’t try!” She shivered. “I beg you, don’t try!”
“I have sworn to do it, Mama—and do it I will!”
For a long moment she searched his dark eyes, her own less remarkable orbs filled with fear for him. Then she sighed, shrugged. “Well, I won’t talk you out of it, I can see that. You’re not the great-grandnephew of Scipio Africanus for nothing. Oh, my son, my son, they’ll kill you!”
One peaked brow went up. “Why should they, Mama? I am no Gaius Gracchus, no Saturninus. I proceed absolutely within the law—I threaten neither man nor mos maiorum.”
Too upset to continue this particular conversation, she got up quickly. “Come and see the children, they’ve missed you.”
If that was an exaggeration, it wasn’t a large one. Drusus had achieved a measure of popularity among the children.
That a quarrel was in progress became obvious as they neared the children’s playroom.
“I’m going to kill you, Young Cato!” the two adults heard Servilia say as they entered.
“Enough of that, Servilia!” Drusus said sharply, sensing something serious in the girl’s tone. “Young Cato is your half brother, and inviolate.”
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