Of course the time of year militated against anything outside of Rome occupying senatorial minds, no matter how serious or how puzzling; no one wanted to make decisions when one pair of consuls was almost at the end of their term, and the incoming pair was still feeling their way anent House alliances.
Thus it was that internal affairs preoccupied both Senate and Forum during December; the most trivial incidents, because close at hand and essentially Roman, outweighed the Marsic declaration of war easily. Among the more trivial incidents was the vacant priesthood of Marcus Livius Drusus. Even after so many years, Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus still felt he should have been given the place given to Drusus; so he was very quick to put up the name of his elder son, Gnaeus, recently engaged to Cornelia Cinna, the oldest daughter of the patrician Lucius Cornelius Cinna. The pontificate of course belonged to a plebeian, as Drusus had been a plebeian. By the time the nominations were all in, the list of candidates read like a plebeian honor roll. It included Metellus Pius the Piglet, another man existing in a smoldering resentment, as his father’s place had gone by election to Gaius Aurelius Cotta. Then at the last moment Scaurus Princeps Senatus stunned everyone by putting up a patrician name—Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus Livianus, the brother of Drusus.
“It’s not legal on two counts!” snarled Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus. “Number one, he’s a patrician. Number two, he’s an Aemilius, and you’re already a pontifex, Marcus Aemilius, which means another Aemilius can’t belong.”
“Rubbish!” said Scaurus roundly. “I’m not nominating him as an adopted Aemilius, but as the blood brother of the dead priest. He’s a Livius Drusus, and I say he must be nominated.”
The College of Pontifices finally agreed that in this situation Mamercus should be accounted a Livius Drusus, and permitted his name to be added to the list of candidates. How fond of Drusus the electors had become was soon obvious; Mamercus carried all seventeen tribes and succeeded to the priesthood of his brother.
More serious—or so it seemed at the time—was the conduct of Quintus Varius Severus Hybrida Sucronensis. When the new College of Tribunes of the Plebs entered office on the tenth day of December, Quintus Varius immediately moved that a law be placed on the tablets to treason-try every man who had been known to support the general enfranchisement of Italy. All nine of his colleagues promptly vetoed even the discussion of such an act. But Varius took his example from Saturninus, filled the Comitia with louts and hirelings, and succeeded in intimidating the rest of the college into withdrawing their vetos. He also succeeded in intimidating all other opposition, with the result that the New Year saw the establishment of a special treason court all of Rome began to call the Varian Commission, empowered to try only those men who had supported enfranchisement of the Italians. Its terms of reference were so vague and flexible that almost anyone could find himself arraigned, its jury composed purely of knights.
“He’ll use it to pursue his own enemies—and the enemies of Philippus and Caepio,” said Scaurus Princeps Senatus, who made no secret of his opinion. “Wait and see! This is the most disgraceful piece of legislation ever foisted upon us!”
That Scaurus was right Varius demonstrated in the selection of his first victim, the stiff, formal, ultra-conservative praetor of five years earlier, Lucius Aurelius Cotta. Half brother of Aurelia on her father’s side. Never an ardent proponent of enfranchisement, Cotta had nonetheless swung round to it—along with many others in the Senate—during those days when Drusus had fought so strenuously in the House; one of the most cogent reasons behind Cotta’s change of heart was his detestation of Philippus and Caepio. He then made the mistake of cutting Quintus Varius dead.
This oldest Cotta of his generation was an excellent choice for the Varian Commission’s first victim; not as high as the consulars, nor as low as the pedarii. If Varius gained a conviction, his court would become an instrument of terror for the Senate. The first day’s proceedings showed Lucius Cotta all too clearly what his fate was going to be, for the jury impaneled was stuffed with haters of the Senate, and scant notice of the defense’s jury challenges was taken by the court president, the enormously powerful knight-plutocrat Titus Pomponius.
“My father is wrong,” said young Titus Pomponius, standing in the crowd which had gathered to watch the Varian Commission swing into action.
His auditor was another member of Scaevola the Augur’s little band of legal acolytes, Marcus Tullius Cicero, four years his junior in age, forty years his senior in intellect— if not in common sense.
“How do you mean?” asked Cicero, who had gravitated to young Titus Pomponius after the death of Sulla’s son. That had been the first real tragedy of Cicero’s life; even so many months later, he still found himself mourning and missing his dear dead friend.
“This obsession my father has to get into the Senate,” said young Titus Pomponius gloomily. “It eats at him, Marcus Tullius! Not one thing does he do that isn’t directed toward the Senate. Including snapping up Quintus Varius’s wheedling bait to be president of this court. Of course the invalidation of Marcus Livius Drusus’s laws destroyed his certain selection for the Senate, and Quintus Varius has used that to lure him into this. He’s been promised that if he does as he’s told, he’ll get his Senate membership as soon as the new censors are elected.”
“But your father’s in business,” objected Cicero. “He’d have to give it all up except for owning land if he became a senator.”
“Oh, don’t worry, he would!” said young Titus Pomponius, voice bitter. “Here am I, not quite twenty years old, already doing most of the work in the firm—and scant thanks I get, I can tell you! He’s actually ashamed of being in business!”
“What has all this got to do with your father’s being wrong?” asked Cicero.
“Everything, you dunce!” said young Titus. “He wants to get into the Senate! But he’s wrong to want that. He’s a knight, and one of Rome’s ten most important knights, at that. I can see nothing wrong with being one of Rome’s ten most important knights. He has the Public Horse—which he will pass on to me—everyone asks his advice, he’s a great power in the Comitia, and a consultant to the tribunes of the Treasury. Yet what does he want? To be a senator! To be one of those fools in the back row who never even get a chance to speak, let alone speak well!”
“You mean he’s a social climber,” said Cicero. “Well, I can see nothing wrong with that. So am I.”
“My father is already socially the best, Marcus Tullius! By birth and by wealth. The Pomponii are very closely related right down the generations to the Caecilii of the Pilius branch, and you can’t do better than that without being a patrician.” Born to the highest knightly nobility, young Titus went on without realizing how his words would hurt: he said, “I can understand your being a social climber, Marcus Tullius. When you get into the Senate you’ll be a New Man, and if you attain the consulship, you’ll ennoble your family. Which means you’ll have to cultivate every famous man you possibly can, plebeian and patrician. Whereas my father’s becoming a pedarius senator would actually be a backward step.”
“Getting into the Senate is never a backward step!” said Cicero, smarting. Young Titus’s words contained additional sting these days; Cicero had come to understand that the moment he said he came from Arpinum, he was immediately smeared with a little of the same ordure reserved for Arpinum’s most famous citizen, Gaius Marius. If Gaius Marius was an Italian with no Greek, what else could Marcus Tullius Cicero be than a better-educated version of Gaius Marius? The Tullii Cicerones had never been over-fond of the Marii, despite the occasional marriage between the clans; but since arriving in Rome, young Marcus Tullius Cicero had learned to loathe Gaius Marius. And to loathe his birthplace.
“Anyway,” said young Titus Pomponius, “when I am paterfamilias, I am going to be perfectly content with my knight’s lot. If the censors both get down on their knees to me, they’ll beg in vain! For I swear to you, Marcus Tullius, that I will never, never, never enter
the Senate!”
In the meantime, Lucius Cotta’s despair was becoming more evident. It was therefore no surprise when the court reconvened the next day to learn that Lucius Aurelius Cotta had chosen to go into voluntary exile rather than wait for an inevitable verdict of CONDEMNO. This ploy at least enabled a man to gather most of his assets and take them with him into exile; if he waited and was convicted, his assets would be confiscated by the court, and the ensuing exile harder to bear because of lack of funds.
It was a bad time to have to liquidate capital assets, for, while the Senate vacillated in a mood of sheer disbelief and the Comitia were absorbed in the doings of Quintus Varius, the business community sniffed something nasty in the wind, and took appropriate measures. Money went into immediate hiding, shares tottered, the smaller companies held emergency meetings. Manufacturers and importers of luxury goods debated the possibility of strict sumptuary laws should a war ensue, and concocted schemes for switching their lines of goods to war essentials.
Nothing happened to convince the Senate that the Marsic declaration of war was sincere; no word came of an army on the march, no word came of any kind of martial preparations in any Italian nation. The only worrying thing, perhaps, was that Servius Sulpicius Galba, the praetor delegated to look into matters in the south of the peninsula, did not come to Rome. Instead, he had lapsed into complete silence.
The Varian Commission gathered impetus. Lucius Calpurnius Bestia was convicted and sent into exile, his property confiscated; so was Lucius Memmius, who went to Delos. Halfway through January Antonius Orator was arraigned, but gave such a magnificent speech—and was so cheered by the Forum crowds—that the jury prudently decided to acquit him. Angry at this fickle conduct, Quintus Varius retaliated by charging Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus with treason.
Scaurus appeared totally unattended to answer the indictment, clad in his toga praetexta and positively radiating the awesome aura of his dignitas and auctoritas. Impassively he listened to Quintus Varius (who was conducting every prosecution himself) reel off the long list of his wrongdoings in regard to the Italians. When Varius finally stopped speaking, Scaurus snorted. He turned not to face the jury, but to face the crowd.
“Did you hear that, Quirites!” he thundered. “A half-breed upstart from Sucro in Spain accuses Scaurus, Princeps Senatus, of treason! Scaurus denies the charge! Whom do you believe?”
“Scaurus, Scaurus, Scaurus!” chanted the crowd. Then the jury joined in, and finally left its seats to chair Scaurus on its shoulders in a triumphant parade all around the lower Forum.
“The fool!” said Marius to Scaurus afterward. “Did he really think he could convict you of treason? Did the knights think it?”
“After the knights succeeded in convicting poor Publius Rutilius, I imagine they thought they could convict anyone if only they were given the chance,” said Scaurus, adjusting his toga, which had become a little disorganized during his ride.
“Varius should have started his campaign against the more formidable consulars with me, not you,” said Marius. “When Marcus Antonius got off, there was a strong message in it. A message now well and truly driven home! I predict Varius will suspend his activities for a few weeks, then start again—but with less august victims. Bestia doesn’t matter, everyone knows him for a wolfshead. And poor Lucius Cotta didn’t have enough clout. Oh, the Aurelii Cottae are powerful, but they don’t like Lucius—they like the boys his uncle Marcus Cotta bred from Rutilia.” Marius paused, eyebrows dancing wildly. “Of course, Varius’s real disadvantage is that he’s not a Roman. You are. I am. He’s not. He doesn’t understand.”
Scaurus refused to rise to the bait. “Nor do Philippus and Caepio understand,” he said scornfully.
4
The month which Silo and Mutilus had allowed for mobilization was ample. Yet at the end of it, not one Italian army marched. There were two reasons. One, Mutilus could see; the other drove him to the brink of despair. Dickering with the leaders of Etruria and Umbria proceeded at a snail’s pace, and nobody in the war council or the grand council wanted to start aggression before they had an idea what the results might be; that, Mutilus could see. But there was also a curious reluctance to be the first to march—not from fear, rather from an ingrained, centuries-old awe of Rome; and that, Mutilus deplored.
“Let us wait until Rome makes the first move,” said Silo in the war council.
“Let us wait until Rome makes the first move,” said Lucius Fraucus in the grand council.
When he learned that the Marsi had delivered a declaration of war to the Senate, Mutilus had been furious, thinking that Rome would mobilize at once. But Silo had remained unrepentant.
“It’s the proper thing to do,” he maintained. “There are laws governing war, just as there are laws governing every aspect of men’s conduct. Rome cannot say she wasn’t warned.”
And, following that, nothing Mutilus could say or do served to budge his fellow Italian leaders from their decision that Rome must be seen to be the first aggressor.
“If we marched now, we’d murder them!” Mutilus cried in the war council, even as his deputy Gaius Trebatius was saying the same thing in the grand council. “Surely you can see that the more time we give Rome to ready herself, the less likely we are to win this conflict! The fact that no one in Rome is taking any notice of us is our greatest advantage! We must march! We must march tomorrow! If we delay, we’ll lose!”
But all the others solemnly shook their heads save Marius Egnatius, Mutilus’s fellow Samnite on the war council; even Silo refused, though he admitted the logic of it.
“It wouldn’t be right” was the answer the Samnites kept getting, no matter how they pressed.
The massacre at Asculum Picentum made no impression either; Gaius Vidacilius of the Picentes refused to send a garrison force to the city to fend off Roman reprisals— Roman reprisals, he said, were proving long in coming, and might not come at all.
“We must march!” moaned Mutilus again and again. “The farmers are all saying it won’t be much of a winter, so there’s no reason to delay until spring! We must march!”
But no one wanted to march, and no one did march.
*
Thus it was that the first stirrings of revolt occurred among the Samnites. No one on either side considered Asculum Picentum evidence of revolt; the town had simply been tried beyond its endurance, and retaliated. Whereas, having simmered for generations, the huge Samnite population in Campania, inextricably mixed with Romans and Latins, began spontaneously to boil.
Servius Sulpicius Galba brought the first concrete news of it to Rome when he arrived, disheveled and minus his escort, during the month of February.
The new senior consul, Lucius Julius Caesar, summoned the Senate at once to listen to Galba’s report.
“I’ve been a prisoner in Nola for six weeks,” said Galba to a quiet House. “I had just sent off my note informing you that I was on my way home when I arrived in Nola. I hadn’t originally intended to visit Nola, but since I was in the vicinity and Nola does have a large Samnite population, I decided at the last moment to go there. I stayed with an old lady who was my mother’s best friend—a Roman, of course. And she informed me that there were peculiar things happening in Nola—all of a sudden, it was impossible for Romans and Latins to obtain service, goods in the market, even food! Her servants were obliged to take a cart to Acerrae for staples. When I moved through the town with my lictors and troopers I was booed and hissed continuously— yet it was never possible to see which men or women were responsible.”
Galba moved unhappily, aware that the tale of his adventures was not an inspiring one. “During the night after I arrived in Nola, the Samnites shut the city gates and took the place over completely. Every Roman and Latin was taken prisoner and held under restraint in their houses. Including my lictors, my troopers, and my clerks. I found myself locked into my hostess’s house, with a Samnite guard at front door and back gate. And there I remained
until three days ago, when my hostess managed to lure the guards at the back gate away for long enough to enable me to slip out. Dressed as a Samnite merchant, I escaped through the city gates before the hunt got up.”
Scaurus leaned forward. “Did you see anyone of authority during your time as a prisoner, Servius Sulpicius?”
“No one,” said Galba. “I had some conversation with the men on guard at the front door, that’s all.”
“What did they have to say?”
“Only that Samnium was in revolt, Marcus Aemilius. I had no way to ascertain the truth of this, so when I did manage to escape I wasted a whole day hiding from anyone I saw in the distance who looked like a Samnite. It was only when I reached Capua that I found no one knew of this revolt, at least in that part of Campania. In fact, it seems no one knew what was going on in Nola! During the day the Samnite Nolans kept one gate open and pretended nothing was wrong. So when I told those in Capua what had happened to me, they were amazed. And alarmed, I add! The duumviri of Capua have asked me to forward instructions to them from the Senate.”
“Were you fed during your captivity? What about your hostess? Was she permitted to shop in Acerrae?” asked Scaurus.
“Of food, there was little. My hostess was allowed to shop in Nola, but only for limited provisions at extortionate prices. No one Latin or Roman was allowed out of the town,” said Galba.
This time the Senate was full; if the court of Varius had done nothing else, it had succeeded in uniting senatorial ranks—and driven the Senate to hunger for something dramatic enough to remove emphasis from the Varian Commission.
“May I speak?” asked Gaius Marius.
“If no one senior to you wants to speak,” said the junior consul, Publius Rutilius Lupus, coldly; he held the fasces during February, and was no partisan of Marius’s.
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