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

by Colleen McCullough

  The cheering broke out anew; Silo stood on the tribunal and waited, smiling fiercely, until quiet descended again.

  “Rome will not find us divided!” he said. “So much do I swear to every man here, and to every man in a free Italia. We will pool our every resource, from men to money, from food to goods! And those who conduct the war against Rome in Italia’s name will work together more closely than any commanders in the history of war! All over Italia our soldiers are waiting for the call to arms! We have one hundred thousand men ready to take the field within days—and more will come, many more!” He paused, laughed aloud. “Within two years, my fellow Italians, I pledge you that it is Romans who will be crying out to become enfranchised citizens of Italia!”

  Because the cause was as just as it was deserving, as longed for as it was needed, there was virtually no skirmishing for the positions of power, and no internal strife; the council of five hundred buckled down to its civic duties that very day, while the inner council sat down to talk war.

  The magistrates of the inner council had been elected by the simple Greek show of hands, and even included two praetors from nations as yet to join Italia, so sure were the electors that the Lucani and the Venusini would be with them.

  The two consuls were Gaius Papius Mutilus of the Samnites and Quintus Poppaedius Silo of the Marsi. Among the praetors were Herius Asinius of the Marrucini, Publius Vettius Scato of the Marsi, Publius Praesenteius of the Paeligni, Gaius Vidacilius of the Picentes, Marius Egnatius of the Samnites, Titus Lafrenius of the Vestini, Titus Herennius of the Picentes, Gaius Pontidius of the Frentani, Lucius Afranius of the Venusini, and Marcus Lamponius of the Lucani.

  The war council, sitting inside the small meeting chamber of Corfinium/Italica, got down to business immediately also.

  “We must enlist the Etrurians and the Umbrians,” said Mutilus. “Unless they join us, we will never be able to isolate Rome from the north. And if we can’t isolate Rome from the north, she will be able to continue using the resources of Italian Gaul.”

  “The Etrurians and the Umbrians are a peculiar lot,” said the Marsian Scato. “They never have regarded themselves as Italian in the way we do ourselves—and the way Rome regards them, the fools!”

  “They did march in force to protest the breaking up of the ager publicus,” said Herius Asinius. “Surely that indicates they will stand with us?”

  “I think it indicates they won’t,” said Silo, frowning. “Of all the Italian nations, the Etrurians are the most closely tied to Rome, and the Umbrians just blindly follow the Etrurians. Whom do we know among them by name, for instance? No one! The trouble is that the Apennines have always shut them off from the rest of us to the east, Italian Gaul lies to their north, and Rome and Latium bound them to the south. They sell their pine and their pigs to Rome, not to other Italian nations.”

  “The pine I can see, but what do a few pigs matter?” asked the Picentine, Vidacilius.

  Silo grinned. “There are pigs and pigs, Gaius Vidacilius! Some pigs go oink-oink. Other pigs make wonderful mail-shirts.”

  “Pisae and Populonia!” said Vidacilius. “I take your point.”

  “Well, Etruria and Umbria are for the future,” said Mar-ius Egnatius. “I suggest we depute the most persuasive among our five hundred councillors outside to go and see their leaders, while we get down to what is more properly our business. War. How do we want to begin this war?”

  “Quintus Poppaedius, what do you say?” asked Mutilus.

  “We call our soldiers to arms. But while we’re doing that, I suggest that we lull Rome a little by sending a deputation to the Senate of Rome, asking again to be granted the citizenship.”

  Marius Egnatius snorted. “Let them use their citizenship the way a Greek uses a pretty boy!”

  “Oh, certainly,” said Silo pleasantly. “However, there’s no need to let them know that until we can provide them with a tool to ram it home in the person of our armies. We’re ready, yes, but it will take us at least a month to mobilize. I know for a fact that almost everybody in Rome thinks we’re years off being able to march. Therefore, why disillusion them? Another deputation will make it seem as if they’re right about our state of preparedness.”

  “I agree, Quintus Poppaedius,” said Mutilus.

  “Good. Then I suggest we pick a second lot of persuasive talkers from the five hundred councillors outside, to go to Rome. Led by at least one of the war council, I think.”

  “One thing I’m sure of,” said Vidacilius, “is that if we are to win this war, we must do it quickly. We have to hit the Romans hard and fast, on as many fronts as possible. We have wonderfully trained troops, and we’re well supplied with all the materials of war. We have superb centurions.” He paused, looking very dour. “However, we don’t have any generals.”

  “I disagree!” said Silo strongly. “If you mean by that we don’t have a Gaius Marius ready to hand, then you’re right. But he’s an old man now, and who else do the Romans have? Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar, he who prates that he beat the Cimbric Germans in Italian Gaul, when we all know it was Gaius Marius? They have Titus Didius, but he’s no Marius. More importantly, they have his legions in camp in Capua—four of them, and all veterans. Their best generals currently fighting are Sentius and Bruttius Sura in Macedonia, but no one would dare bring them home, they’re too busy.”

  “Before Rome will see herself conquered by the likes of us,” said Mutilus bitterly, “she’ll throw every province she has to the four winds and bring the lot home to fight. That is why we have to win this war in a hurry!”

  “I have one further thing to say about the subject of generals,” said Silo patiently. “It doesn’t really matter whom Rome has in her general’s cupboard, you know. Because Rome will behave as Rome always does—the consuls of the year will be the commanders in the field. I think we can discount Sextus Julius Caesar and Lucius Marcius Philippus—their terms are almost over. Who next year’s consuls are likely to be, I don’t know. However, they must surely have elected someone by now. Which is why I disagree with you, Gaius Vidacilius, and with you, Gaius Papius. We in this room have all done as much military service as any of the current crop of consular candidates in Rome. I for one have seen several major actions—and been privileged to see Rome lose horribly at Arausio! My praetor Scato, you yourself, Gaius Vidacilius, Gaius Papius, Herius Asinius, Marius Egnatius—why, there isn’t a man in this room who hasn’t served in his six campaigns! We know the command routines at least as well as whomsoever the Romans will field, both legates and commanders.”

  “We also have a great advantage,” said Praesenteius. “We know the country better than the Romans do. We’ve been training men up and down Italy for years now. Roman military experience is abroad, not in Italy. Once the legionaries are out of their recruit schools in Capua, they’re gone. It’s a pity Didius’s troops haven’t been shipped out yet, but those four legions of veterans are just about all the troops Rome has at her disposal, short of bringing overseas legions home.”

  “Didn’t Publius Crassus bring home troops from Further Spain when he celebrated his triumph?” asked Herius Asinius.

  “He did, but they were shipped back again when the Spains revolted as usual,” said Mutilus, in best situation to know what was going on in Capua. “Titus Didius’s four were kept in case they were needed in Asia Province and Macedonia.”

  At that moment a messenger came in from the marketplace with a note from the councillors; Mutilus took it, muttered his way through it several times, then laughed harshly.

  “Well, generals of the war council, it appears our friends out there in the public square are as determined as we are to see this thing done! I have here a document informing us that all the members of the concilium Italiae have agreed that every major town in Italia will pair itself with a town of like size in a different Italian state, and the two will exchange hostages—fifty children from all walks of life, no less!”

  “I’d call that evidence o
f mistrust,” said Silo.

  “I suppose it is. Nonetheless, it’s also physical proof of dedication and determination. I’d prefer to call it an act of faith, that every town in Italia is willing to put the lives of fifty of its children at risk,” said Mutilus. “The fifty from my town of Bovianum are to go to Marruvium, while Marruvium’s fifty go to my town of Bovianum. I see several more exchanges have already been decided—Asculum Picentum and Sulmo—Teate and Saepinum. Good!”

  Silo and Mutilus walked outside to confer with the grand council, and came back some time later to discover their fellow members of the war council had been talking strategy in their absence.

  “We march on Rome first,” said Titus Lafrenius.

  “Yes, but we don’t commit all our forces to it,” said Mutilus, sitting down. “If we proceed on the assumption that we’ll get no co-operation from Etruria and Umbria— and I think we must—then we can do nothing to the north of Rome for the moment. And we can’t allow ourselves to forget that northern Picenum is too firmly under the control of the Roman Pompeii to aid us either. Do you agree, Gaius Vidacilius, Titus Herennius?”

  “We must agree,” said Vidacilius heavily. “Northern Picenum is Roman. Pompey Strabo owns more than half of it personally—and what he doesn’t own, Pompeius Rufus does. We have a wedge between Sentinum and Camerinum, no more.”

  “Very well, we’ll have to abandon the north almost entirely,” said Mutilus. “East of Rome, we’re in much better condition, of course, once the Apennines start rising. And in the south of the peninsula we’ve an excellent chance of cutting Rome off completely from Tarentum and Brundisium. If Marcus Lamponius brings Lucania into Italia—and I’m sure he will—then we’ll also be able to isolate Rome from Rhegium.” He stopped to grimace. “However, there remain the lowlands of Campania, extending through Samnium to the Apulian Adriatic. And it’s here we must strike hardest at Rome, for several reasons. Chiefly because Rome thinks Campania is a spent force, undeniably Roman at last. But that is not true, gentlemen! They may hang on to Capua, they may hang on to Puteoli. But I think we can take the rest of Campania off Rome! And if we do that, we take their best seaports near to Rome, we cut their access to the big and vital seaports of the far south, we deprive them of their best local growing lands—and we isolate Capua. Once we have Rome fighting defensively, Etruria and Umbria will scramble to throw in their lots with us. We have to control every road into Rome on her east and her south, and we have to make a bid to control the Via Flaminia and the Via Cassia as well. Once Etruria comes in on our side, of course, we’ll own every last Roman road. If necessary, we can then starve Rome out.”

  “There, Gaius Vidacilius, you see?” asked Silo triumphantly. “Who says we don’t have any generals?”

  Vidacilius lifted his hands in surrender. “I take your point, Quintus Poppaedius! In Gaius Papius, we have a general.”

  “I think you’ll find,” said Mutilus, “that we have a dozen good generals without going outside this room.”

  2

  On the same day that the new nation of Italia was formed and its most prominent men settled down in the new capital city of Italica to deliberate, the praetor Quintus Servilius of the Augur’s family commenced to ride along the Via Salaria from the port city of Firmum Picenum, going in the direction of Rome at last. Since June he had patrolled the lands north of Rome, heading up through the fertile rolling hills of Etruria to the river Arnus, which formed the boundary of Italian Gaul; from there he went east into Umbria, thence south into Picenum, and down the Adriatic coast. He had, he felt, acquitted himself very well. No Italian stone had gone unturned—and if he had discovered no deep-laid plots, that was because there were no deep-laid plots, he was sure of it.

  His progress had been royal in all save name. Dowered with a proconsular imperium, he enjoyed the sumptuous panoply of riding behind twelve crimson-clad, black-and-brass-belted lictors bearing the axes in their bundles of rods. Ambling along on a snow-white palfrey, clad in silver-plated armor with a purple tunic underneath, Quintus Servilius of the Augur’s family had unconsciously borrowed from King Tigranes of Armenia by ordering that a slave travel beside him holding a parasol to shade him from the sun. Had Lucius Cornelius Sulla only seen him, that strange man would have laughed himself sick. And probably proceeded to haul Quintus Servilius off his demure little lady’s mount and rub his face in the dust.

  Each day a group of Quintus Servilius’s servants rushed ahead of him to find the best accommodation available, usually in some local magnate’s or magistrate’s villa; that he was indifferent as to how the rest of his entourage fared was typical of him. As well as his lictors and a large party of slaves, he was escorted by twenty heavily armed and beautifully mounted troopers. With him for much-needed company on this leisurely progress he took as his legate one Fonteius, a rich nonentity who had just purchased himself a small share of glory by donating (along with a huge dowry) his daughter, Fonteia, aged seven, to the College of Vestal Virgins.

  It seemed to Quintus Servilius of the Augur’s family that much senatorial fuss had been made about nothing in Rome, but he was disinclined to complain, having seen more of Italy than he had ever thought to see, and under circumstances of unparalleled deliciousness. Wherever he went, he was feted and feasted; his money chest was still more than half full due to the generosity of his hosts and the awesome power of a proconsular imperium, which meant he would finish the year of his praetorship nicely plump in the purse—and at the expense of the State.

  The Via Salaria of course was the Old Salt Road, Rome’s original key to prosperity in the days before the kings, when the salt mined from the flats at Ostia had been disseminated along this road by Latin merchant-soldiers. However, in these modern times the Via Salaria had dwindled in importance to the point where its roadbed was not kept up by a negligent State, as Quintus Servilius discovered shortly after he left Firmum Picenum. Washouts due to past flooding plagued him every few miles, there was not a scrap of surface left atop the rounded stones of the foundations — and, to cap everything, when he entered the pass to the next town of any importance, Asculum Picentum, he found his passage barred by a landslide. It took his men a day and a half to clear a safe path, time which poor Quintus Servilius was obliged to spend at the site of the landslide in conditions of acute discomfort.

  The journey from the coast was steeply uphill, for the eastern littoral was narrow, the spine of the Apennines looming close and very tall. Yet inland Asculum Picentum was the largest and most important town in all southern Picenum, surrounded by a daunting circumference of high stone walls which echoed the daunting peaks of the mountains also encircling the city. The river Truentius flowed nearby, little more than a string of waterholes at this time of the year, but the clever Asculans had tapped their water supply from a layer of gravel well below the riverbed.

  His advance guard of servants had done their work, Quintus Servilius discovered when he reached the main gates of Asculum Picentum at last; there he was welcomed by a small gathering of obviously prosperous merchants who spoke Latin instead of Greek, and all wore the togas of Roman citizenship.

  Quintus Servilius dismounted from his snow-white lady’s horse, hitched his purple cloak across his left shoulder, and received his welcoming committee with gracious condescension.

  “This isn’t a Roman or Latin colony, is it?” he asked vaguely, his knowledge of such things not as good as it ought have been, especially given that he was a Roman praetor traveling Italy.

  “No, Quintus Servilius, but there are about a hundred of us Roman businessmen living here,” said the leader of the deputation, whose name was Publius Fabricius.

  “Then where are the leading Picentines?” demanded Quintus Servilius indignantly. “I expect to be met by the natives too!”

  Fabricius looked apologetic. “The Picentines have been avoiding us Romans for months, Quintus Servilius. Why, I don’t know! However, they seem to be harboring a lot of ill feeling toward us. And today is a loc
al festival in honor of Picus.”

  “Picus?” Quintus Servilius blinked. “They have a festival in honor of a woodpecker?”

  They were walking through the gates into a small square festooned with garlands of autumn flowers, its cobbles strewn with rose petals and tiny daisies.

  “Hereabouts, Picus is a kind of Picentine Mars,” said Fabricius. “He was the King of Old Italy, they believe, and he led the Picentes from their original Sabine lands across the mountains to what we call Picenum. When they got here, Picus transformed himself into a woodpecker, and marked out their boundaries by drilling the trees.”

  “Oh,” said Quintus Servilius, losing interest.

  Fabricius conducted Quintus Servilius and his legate Fonteius to his own splendid mansion on the highest point within the city, having arranged that lictors and troopers be quartered nearby in appropriate comfort, and having managed to accommodate the party’s slaves within his own slave quarters. Quintus Servilius began to expand under this deferential and luxurious treatment, especially after he saw his room, quite the best in a very nice house.

  The day was hot, the sun still overhead; the two Romans bathed, then joined their host on the loggia overlooking the city, its impressive walls, and the more impressive mountains beyond, a grander view than most city houses anywhere owned.