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

by Colleen McCullough

  “And Mutilus?”

  “Withdrew immediately. For the moment, Capua is safe.”

  “Excellent, Lucius Julius!”

  “I wish I thought so,” said Lucius Caesar dolefully.

  Suppressing a sigh, Sulla asked, “What else has happened?”

  “Publius Crassus has lost his oldest boy before Grumentum, and was shut up inside the town for a long while. But the Lucanians are as fickle as they are lacking in discipline, luckily for Publius Crassus and his middle boy. Lamponius drew his men off to somewhere else, and Publius and Lucius Crassus got out.” The commander-in-chief heaved an enormous sigh. “Those fools in Rome wanted me to drop everything and appear in Rome for no better reason than to supervise the choosing of a consul suffectus to replace Lupus until the elections. I told them where to go, and recommended that they rely upon their urban praetor—there’s nothing in Rome Cinna can’t deal with.” He sighed yet again, sniffed, bethought himself of something else. “Gaius Coelius in Italian Gaul has dispatched a beautiful little army under Publius Sulpicius to assist Pompey Strabo in getting his conceited Picentine arse out of Firmum Picenum. I wish Publius Sulpicius good luck in dealing with that cross-eyed semi-barbarian! I must say, however, Lucius Cornelius, that you and Gaius Marius were right about young Quintus Sertorius. At the moment he’s governing Italian Gaul completely on his own, and doing better than Gaius Coelius. Coelius has gone off to Gaul-across-the-Alps in a hurry.”

  “What’s going on there?”

  “The Salluvii have gone on a headhunting spree.’’ Lucius Caesar grimaced. “What hope have we ever got of civilizing these people when several hundred years of exposure to Greeks and Romans haven’t even made an impression? The moment they thought we weren’t looking, back came the old barbarian habits. Headhunting! I sent Gaius Coelius a personal message instructing him to be utterly merciless. We can’t afford a major uprising in Gaul-across-the-Alps.”

  “So young Quintus Sertorius is holding the fort in Italian Gaul,” said Sulla. An extraordinary expression of mingled weariness, impatience, and bitterness settled on his face. “Well, what else could one expect? The Grass Crown before he was thirty.”

  “Jealous?” asked Lucius Caesar slyly.

  Sulla twisted. “No, I’m not jealous! Good luck to him, and may he prosper! I like that young man. I’ve known him since he was a cadet with Marius in Africa.”

  Lucius Caesar made an inarticulate noise and slumped back into his gloom.

  “Has anything else happened?” prompted Sulla.

  “Sextus Julius Caesar took his half of the troops he brought back from overseas and headed up the Via Appia to Rome, where I gather he intends to spend the winter.” Lucius Caesar did not care very much for his cousin. “He’s sick, as usual. Luckily he’s got his brother Gaius with him—between them they make one decent man.”

  “Ah! So my friend Aurelia will have a husband for a little while,” said Sulla, smiling tenderly.

  “You know, Lucius Cornelius, you’re odd! What on earth does that matter?”

  “It matters not at all. But you are right nonetheless, Lucius Julius. I am odd!”

  Lucius Caesar saw something in Sulla’s face that made him decide to change the subject. “You and I are off again very soon.”

  “Are we? Upon what deed? To where?”

  “Your move on Aesernia convinced me that Aesernia is the key to this whole theater of war. Mutilus is heading there himself, having lost here—or so your intelligence system tells me. I think we must head there too. It mustn’t fall.”

  “Oh, Lucius Julius!” cried Sulla in despair. “Aesernia is no more than a spiritual thorn in the Italian paw! While ever it holds out, the Italians must doubt their ability to win this war. But beyond that, Aesernia has no importance! Besides which, it is very well provisioned, and it has a very capable and determined commandant in Marcus Claudius Marcellus. Let it sit there thumbing its nose at the besiegers and don’t worry about it! The only route available if Mutilus has withdrawn into the interior is the Melfa Gorge. Why risk our precious soldiers in that trap?”

  Lucius Caesar reddened. “You got through!”

  “Yes, I did. I tricked them. It can’t work a second time.”

  “I will get through,” said Lucius Caesar stiffly.

  “How many legions?”

  “All we have. Eight.”

  “Oh, Lucius Julius, forget this scheme!” Sulla pleaded. “It would be smarter and wiser to concentrate upon driving the Samnites out of western Campania for good! With eight legions working as one unit, we can take all the ports off Mutilus, reinforce Acerrae, and take Nola. Nola to the Italians is more important than Aesernia is to us!”

  The general’s lips thinned in displeasure. “I am in the command tent, Lucius Cornelius, not you! And I say, Aesernia.”

  Sulla shrugged, gave up. “As you say, of course.”

  *

  Seven days later Lucius Julius Caesar and Lucius Cornelius Sulla moved out toward Teanum Sidicinum with eight legions, the entire force available in the southern theater. Every atom of superstition Sulla had in him was screaming in alarm, but he had no choice save to do as he was told. Lucius Caesar was the general. More’s the pity, thought Sulla as he walked at the head of his two legions—the same he had taken to Aesernia—and surveyed the great column ahead of him snaking up and down the low hills. Lucius Caesar had placed Sulla at the tail of the march, far enough away from himself to ensure that Sulla could not share his bivouacs or his conversations. Metellus Pius the Piglet was now elevated to share Lucius Caesar’s bivouacs and conversations, a promotion which had not pleased him in the least. He wanted to stay with Sulla.

  At Aquinum the general sent for Sulla, and threw him a letter rather contemptuously. How have the mighty fallen! thought Sulla, remembering how in Rome at the beginning of all this, it had been he to whom Lucius Caesar had turned for advice, it had been he who became Lucius Caesar’s “expert.” Now Lucius Caesar regarded himself as the expert.

  “Read that,” said Lucius Caesar curtly. “It’s just come in from Gaius Marius.”

  Courtesy normally prompted the man who had received a letter to read it out to those with whom he shared it later on; aware of this, Sulla smiled wryly to himself and laboriously worked his way through Marius’s communication.

  As the northern commander-in-chief, Lucius Julius, I believe the time has come to inform you of my plans. I write this on the Kalends of Sextilis, in camp near Reate.

  It is my intention to invade the lands of the Marsi. My army is finally in peak condition, and I am absolutely confident it will acquit itself in the same magnificent fashion as all my armies in the past have done, for the sake of Rome and the sake of their general.

  Oho! thought Sulla, hackles rising. I’ve never heard the old boy express himself in quite those terms before! “For the sake of Rome and the sake of their general.’’ Now what gnat is whining round in his mind? Why is he linking himself personally to Rome? My army! Not Rome’s army, but my army! I wouldn’t have noticed it—we all say it—except for his reference to himself as their general. This communication will go into the archives of the war. And in it, Gaius Marius is putting himself on an equal footing with Rome!

  Quickly Sulla lifted his head, glanced at Lucius Caesar; but if the southern commander-in-chief had spotted the phrase, he was pretending he had not. And so much subtlety, decided Sulla, Lucius Caesar did not have. He went back to deciphering Marius’s letter.

  I think you will agree with me, Lucius Julius, that we need a victory—a complete and decisive victory— in my theater. Rome has called our war against the Italians the Marsic War, so we must defeat the Marsi in the field, if at all possible break the Marsi beyond recovery.

  Now I can do that, my dear Lucius Julius, but in order to do it, I need the services of my old friend and colleague, Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Plus two more legions. I understand completely that you can ill afford to lose Lucius Cornelius—not to mention two legion
s. If I did not consider it imperative that I ask, I would not ask this favor of you. Nor, I assure you, is this transfer of personnel a permanent one. Call it a loan, not a gift. Two months is all I need.

  If you can see your way clear to granting my petition, Rome will fare the better for your kindness to me. If you cannot see your way clear, then I must sit down again in Reate and think of something else.

  Sulla raised his head and stared at Lucius Caesar, his brows climbing. “Well?” he asked, putting the letter down on Lucius Caesar’s desk carefully.

  “By all means go to him, Lucius Cornelius,” said Lucius Caesar indifferently. “I can deal with Aesernia without you. Gaius Marius is right. We need a decisive victory in the field against the Marsi. This southern theater is a shambles anyway. It’s quite impossible to contain the Samnites and their allies or get enough of them together in one place to inflict a decisive defeat upon them. All I can do here is engage in demonstrations of Roman strength and persistence. There will be no decisive battle in the south, ever. It is in the north that must happen.”

  Up went Sulla’s hackles yet again. One of the two generals was thinking of himself in the same breath as Rome, the other was in a permanent slough of despond, incapable of seeing any light in east or west or south. Lucky perhaps that he could see a little glow in the north! How can we succeed in Campania with a man like Lucius Caesar in command? asked Sulla of himself. Ye gods, why is it that I am never quite senior enough? I’m better than Lucius Caesar! I may well be better than Gaius Marius! Since I entered the Senate I have spent my life serving lesser men— even Gaius Marius is a lesser man because he isn’t a patrician Cornelius. Metellus Piggle-wiggle, Gaius Marius, Catulus Caesar, Titus Didius, and now this chronically depressed scion of an ancient house! And who is it goes from strength to strength, wins the Grass Crown, and ends up governing a whole province at the ripe old age of thirty? Quintus Sertorius. A Sabine nobody. Marius’s cousin!

  “Lucius Caesar, we will win!” said Sulla very seriously. “I tell you, I can hear the wings of Victory in the air all around us! We’ll grind the Italians down to so much powder. Beat us in a battle or two the Italians may, but beat us in a war, they cannot! No one can! Rome is Rome, mighty and eternal. I believe in Rome!”

  “Oh, so do I, Lucius Cornelius, so do I!” said Lucius Caesar testily. “Now go away! Make yourself useful to Gaius Marius, for I swear you are not very useful to me!”

  Sulla got to his feet, and was actually as far as the outer doorway of the house Lucius Caesar had commandeered when he turned back. So intent had he been upon the letter that Lucius Caesar’s physical appearance hadn’t had the power to deflect his attention away from Gaius Marius. Now a fresh fear filled him. The general was sallow, lethargic, shivering, sweating.

  “Lucius Julius, are you well?” Sulla demanded.

  “Yes, yes!”

  Sulla sat down again. “You’re not, you know.”

  “I am well enough, Lucius Cornelius.”

  “See a physician!”

  “In this village? It would be some filthy old woman prescribing decoctions of pig manure and poultices of pounded spiders.”

  “I’ll be going past Rome. I’ll send you the Sicilian.”

  “Then send him to Aesernia, Lucius Cornelius, because that is where he’ll find me.” Lucius Caesar’s brow shone with sweat. “You are dismissed.”

  Sulla lifted his shoulders, got up. “Be it on your own head. You’ve got the ague.”

  And that, he reflected, going through the door onto the street without turning back this time, was that. Lucius Caesar was going to enter the Melfa Gorge in no fit state to organize a harvest dance. He was going to be ambushed, and he was going to have to retire to Teanum Sidicinum a second time to lick his wounds, with too many precious men lying dead in the bottom of that treacherous defile. Oh, why were they always so pigheaded, so obtuse?

  Not very far down the street he encountered the Piglet, looking equally grim.

  “You’ve got a sick man in there,” said Sulla, jerking his head toward the house.

  “Don’t rub it in!” cried Metellus Pius. “At the best of times he’s quite impossible to cheer up, but in the grip of an ague—I despair! What did you do to make him stiffen up and ignore you?”

  “Told him to forget Aesernia and concentrate on driving the Samnites out of western Campania.’’

  “Yes, that would account for it, with our commander-in-chief in his present state,’’ said the Piglet, finding a smile.

  The Piglet’s stammer had always fascinated Sulla, who said now, “Your stammer’s pretty good these days.”

  “Oh, why did you have to suh-suh-say that, Lucius Cornelius? It’s only all ruh-ruh-right as long as I don’t think about it, cuh-cuh-curse you!”

  “Really? That’s interesting. You didn’t stammer before—when? Arausio, wasn’t it?”

  “ Yes. It’ s a puh-puh-puh-pain in the arse!’’ Metellus Pius drew a deep breath and endeavored to dismiss the thought of his speech impediment from consciousness. “In your pruh-pruh-present state of odium, I don’t suppose he tuh-tuh-told you what he’s planning to do when he gets back to Rome?”

  “No. What is he planning to do?”

  “Grant the citizenship to every Italian who hasn’t so far lifted a finger against us.”

  “You’re joking!”

  “Not I, Lucius Cornelius! In his company? I’ve forgotten what a joke is. It’s true, I swear it’s true. As soon as things run down here—well, they always do when autumn gets old—he’s putting off his general’s suit and putting on his purple-bordered tuh-tuh-toga. His last act as consul, he says, will be to grant the citizenship to every Italian who hasn’t gone to war against us.”

  “But that’s treason! Do you mean to say that he and the rest of the inadequate idiots in command have lost thousands of men for the sake of something they haven’t even got the stomach to see through?” Sulla was trembling. “Do you mean to say he’s leading six legions into the Melfa Gorge knowing every life he loses in the process is worthless? Knowing that he intends to open Rome’s back door to every last Italian in the peninsula? Because that is what will happen, you know. They’ll all get the franchise, from Silo and Mutilus down to the last freedman Silo and Mutilus have in their clientele! Oh, he can’t!”

  “There’s no use shouting at me, Lucius Cornelius! I’ll be one of those fighting the franchise to the bitter end.”

  “You won’t even get the chance to fight it, Quintus Caecilius. You’ll be in the field, not in the Senate. Only Scaurus will be there to fight it, and he’s too old.” Lips thin, Sulla stared sightlessly down the busy street. “It’s Philippus and the rest of the saltatrices tonsae will vote. And they’ll vote yes. As will the Comitia.”

  “You’ll be in the field too, Lucius Cornelius,” said the Piglet gloomily. “I huh-huh-hear you’ve been seconded to duty with Gaius Marius, the fat old Italian turnip! He won’t disapprove of Lucius Julius’s law, I’ll bet!”

  “I’m not so sure,” said Sulla, and sighed. “One thing you have to admit about Gaius Marius, Quintus Caecilius— he’s first and last and foremost a soldier. Before his days in the field are over, there’ll be a few Marsi too dead to apply for the citizenship.”

  “Let us hope so, Lucius Cornelius. Because on the day that Gaius Marius enters a Senate half full of Italians, he’ll be the First Man in Rome again. And consul a seventh time.”

  “Not if I have anything to do with it,” said Sulla.

  *

  The next day Sulla detached his two legions from the tail of Lucius Caesar’s column when it wheeled right ahead of him onto the road leading up the Melfa River. He himself kept to the Via Latina, crossing the Melfa en route to the old ruined township of Fregellae, reduced to rubble by Lucius Opimius after its rebellion thirty-five years before. His legions halted outside the curiously peaceful, flower-filled dells created by Fregellae’s fallen walls and towers. In no mood to supervise his tribunes and centurions d
oing something as fundamental as pitching fortified camp, Sulla himself walked on alone into the deserted town.

  Here it lies, he thought, everything we’re currently fighting about. Here it lies the way those asses in the Senate assured us it would be by the time we put this new Italy-wide revolution down. We’ve given our time, our taxes, our very lives to turn Italy into one vast Fregellae. We said every Italian life would be forfeit. Crimson poppies would grow in ground crimson with Italian blood. We said Italian skulls would bleach to the color of those white roses, and the yellow eyes of daisies would stare blindly up at the sun out of their empty orbits. What are we doing this for, if it is all to go for nothing? Why have we died and why are we still dying if it is all for nothing? He will legislate the citizenship for the half-rebels in Umbria and Etruria. After that, he cannot stop. Or someone else will pick up the wand of imperium he drops. They will all get the citizenship, their hands still red with our blood. What are we doing this for if it is all to go for nothing? We, the heirs of the Trojans, who therefore should well know the feeling of traitors within the gates. We, who are Roman, not Italian. And he will see them become Roman. Between him and those in his like, they will destroy everything Rome stands for. Their Rome will not be the Rome of their ancestors, nor my Rome. This ruined Italian garden here at Fregellae is my Rome, the Rome of my ancestors—strong enough and sure enough to grow flowers in rebellious streets, free them for the hum and twitter of bees and birds.

  He wasn’t sure how much of the shimmer in front of his eyes was a part of his grief, how much a part of the blistering cobbles beneath his feet. But through its rivulets in the air he began to discern an approaching shape, blue and bulky— a Roman general walking toward a Roman general. Now more black than blue, men a shining glitter off cuirass and helm. Gaius Marius! Gaius Marius the Italian.