“I do see that, Aunt Julia,” the boy said too softly for anyone else to hear. “Don’t worry about me. I will deal with everything.”
Finally, it being sunset, the departures were permitted. The new flamen Dialis—carrying his too-small apex but clad in his suffocating laena, his shoes slopping because they could not be made to fit well by laces or straps—walked home with his parents, his unusually solemn sisters, his Aunt Julia, and Young Marius and his bride. Cinnilla the new flaminica Dialis—now also robed without knot or buckle in stifling heavy wool—went home with her parents, her brother, her sister Cornelia Cinna, and Gnaeus Ahenobarbus.
“So Cinnilla will remain with her own family until she’s eighteen,” said Aurelia brightly to Julia, intentionally making small talk as she got everyone settled in the dining room to enjoy a late and festive dinner. “Eleven years into the future! At that age it seems such a long time. At my age, it is too short.”
“Yes, I agree,” said Julia colorlessly, sitting down between Mucia Tertia and Aurelia.
“What a lot of weddings!” said Caesar cheerfully, terribly aware of his sister’s blighted face. He was reclining on the lectus medius in the host’s normal place, and had given the place of honor alongside him to the new flamen Dialis, who had never been allowed to recline in his life, and now found it as strange and uncomfortable as everything else was on this tumultuous day.
“Why didn’t Gaius Marius come?” asked Aurelia tactlessly.
Julia flushed, shrugged. “He’s too busy.”
Wishing she could bite off her tongue, Aurelia subsided without commenting, and looked rather wildly toward her husband for rescue. But rescue didn’t come; instead, Young Caesar made things worse.
“Rubbish! Gaius Marius didn’t come because he didn’t dare come,” said the new flamen Dialis, suddenly sitting bolt upright on the couch and removing his laena, which was dumped unceremoniously on the floor beside the special shoes. “There, that’s better. The wretched thing! I hate it, I hate it!”
Seizing upon this as a way out of her own dilemma, Aurelia frowned at her son. “Don’t be impious,” she said.
“Even if I speak the truth?” asked Young Caesar, subsiding onto his left elbow and looking defiant.
At that moment the first course came in—crusty white bread, olives, eggs, celery, several lettuce salads.
Finding himself very hungry—the rituals had permitted him no food—the new flamen Dialis reached out for the bread.
“Don’t!” said Aurelia sharply, color fading in fear.
The lad froze, staring at her. “Why not?” he asked.
“You are forbidden to touch wheaten or leavened bread,” said his mother. “Here is your bread now.”
And in came a platter which was set in front of the new flamen Dialis; a platter containing some thin, flat, utterly unappetizing slabs of a grey-hued substance.
“What is it?” Young Caesar asked, gazing at it with loathing. “Mola salsa ?’’
“Mola salsa is made from spelt, which is wheat,” said Aurelia, knowing very well that he knew it. “This is barley.”
“Unleavened barley bread,” said Young Caesar tonelessly. “Even Egyptian peasants live better than this! I think I will eat ordinary bread. This stuff would make me sick.”
“Young Caesar, this is the day of your inauguration,” said the father. “The omens were auspicious. You are now the flamen Dialis. On this day above all other days, everything must be scrupulously observed. You are Rome’s direct link to the Great God. Whatever you do affects Rome’s relations with the Great God. You’re hungry, I know. And it is pretty awful stuff, I agree. But you cannot think of self ahead of Rome from this day forward. Eat your own bread.’’
The boy’s eyes traveled from face to face. He drew a breath, and said what had to be said. No adult could say it, they had too many years and too many fears for this and that and everything.
“This is not a time for rejoicing. How can any of us feel glad? How can I feel glad?” He reached out for the fresh crisp white bread, took a piece, broke it, dipped it in olive oil, and thrust some into his mouth. “No one bothered to ask me seriously whether I wanted this unmanly job,” he said, chewing with relish. “Oh yes, Gaius Marius asked me three times, I know! But what choice did I have, tell me that? The answer is, none. Gaius Marius is mad. We all know that, though we don’t say it openly among ourselves as dinnertime conversation. He did this to me deliberately, and his reasons were not pious, not concerned with the welfare of Rome, religious or otherwise.’’ He swallowed the bread. “I am not yet a man. Until I am, I will not wear that frightful gear. I will put on my belt and my toga praetexta and decently comfortable footwear. I will eat whatever I like. I will go to the Campus Martius to perform my drills, practise my swordplay, ride my horse, handle my shield, throw my pilum. When I am a man and my bride is my wife, we shall see. Until then, I will not act as flamen Dialis inside the bosom of my family or when it interferes with the normal duties of a noble Roman boy.”
Complete silence followed this declaration of independence. The mature members of the family tried to find the right response, feeling for the first time some of the helplessness the crippled, incapacitated Gaius Marius had felt when he came up against that will of iron. What could one do? wondered the father, who shrank from locking the boy in his sleeping cubicle until he changed his mind, for he did not think the treatment would work. More determined by far, Aurelia seriously contemplated the same course of action, but knew much better than her husband that it would not work. The wife and son of the man who had generated all this unhappiness were too aware of the truth to be angry, too aware of their own inability to change things to be righteous. Mucia Tertia, awed at the size and good looks of her new husband, unused to a family circle which spoke frankly, gazed at her knees. And Young Caesar’s sisters, older than he and therefore used to him since his infancy, looked at each other ruefully.
Julia broke the silence by saying peacefully, “I think you are quite right, Young Caesar. At half past thirteen, the most sensible things you can do are to eat good food and keep exercising vigorously. After all, Rome may need your health and skills one day, even if you are the flamen Dialis. Look at poor old Lucius Merula. I’m sure he never expected to have to act as consul. But when he had to, he did. No one deemed him less the priest of Jupiter, or impious.”
The senior in age among the women, Julia was allowed to have her way—if for no other reason that it presented the boy’s parents with an attitude which prevented a permanent breach between them and their difficult son.
Young Caesar ate wheaten leavened bread and eggs and olives and chicken until his hunger pangs vanished, then patted his belly, replete. He was not a poor eater, but food interested him little, and he knew perfectly well that he could have gone without the crusty white bread, could have satisfied himself with the other. But it was better that his family understood from the beginning how he felt about his new career, and how he intended to approach it. If Aunt Julia and Young Marius were rendered unhappy and guilty by his words, that was too bad. Vital to the well-being of Rome the priest of Jupiter might be, yet the appointment was not of his choosing, and Young Caesar knew in his heart that the Great God had other things for him to do than sweep out the temple.
Dietary crisis aside, declaration of independence aside, it was a bitter meal. So much unsaid, so much which had to remain unsaid. For everybody’s sake. Perhaps Young Caesar’s candidness had saved the dinner; it drew the focus of everyone’s thoughts away from the atrocities of Gaius Marius, the madness of Gaius Marius.
“I’m glad today is over,” said Aurelia to Caesar as they went to their bedroom.
“I never want another such,” said Caesar with feeling.
Before she removed her clothes Aurelia sat on the edge of the bed and looked up at her husband. He seemed fatigued—but then, he always did. How old was he? Almost forty-five. The consulship was passing him by, and he was no Marius, no Sulla. Gazing at
him now, Aurelia knew suddenly that he would never be consul. A great deal of the blame for that, she thought, must be laid at my feet. If he had a less busy and independent wife, he would have spent more time at home this last decade, and made more of a reputation for himself in the Forum. He’s not a fighter, my husband. And how can he go to a madman to ask for the funds to mount a serious campaign to be elected consul? He won’t do it. Not from fear. From pride. The money is sticky with blood now. No decent man would want to use it. And he is the most decent of men, my husband.
“Gaius Julius,” she said, “what can we do about our son and his flaminate? He hates it so!”
“Understandably. However,” he said with a sigh, “I will never be consul now. And that means he would have a very difficult time of it becoming consul himself. With this war in Italy, our money has dwindled. You may as well say I’ve lost the thousand iugera of land I bought in Lucania because it was so cheap. It’s too far from a town ever to be safe, I suspect. After Gaius Norbanus turned the Lucanians back from Sicily last year, the insurgents have gone to earth in places like my land. And Rome will not have the time, the men or the money to chase them out, even in our son’s lifetime. So all that remains is my original endowment, the six hundred iugera Gaius Marius bought for me near Bovillae. Enough for the back benches of the Senate, not the cursus honorum. You might say Gaius Marius took the land back again. His troops have ruined it in these last months while they roamed Latium.’’
“I know,” said Aurelia sadly. “Our poor son will have to be content with his flaminate, won’t he?”
“I fear so.”
“He’s so convinced Gaius Marius did it on purpose!”
“Oh, I think he did,” said Caesar. “I was there in the Forum. He was—indecently pleased with himself.”
“Then my son has received scant thanks for all the time he gave Gaius Marius after his second stroke.”
“Gaius Marius has no gratitude left. What frightened me was the fear in Lucius Cinna. He told me that no one was safe, even Julia and Young Marius. After seeing Gaius Marius, I believe him.”
Caesar had removed his clothes, and Aurelia saw with faint alarm that he had lost weight; his ribs and hipbones were showing, his thighs were farther apart.
“Gaius Julius, are you well?” she asked abruptly.
He looked surprised. “I think so! A little tired, perhaps, but not ill. It’s probably that sojourn in Ariminum. After three years of Pompey Strabo’s marching up and down, there’s very little left to feed legions with anywhere in Umbria or Picenum. So we had short commons, Marcus Gratidianus and I, and if one cannot feed the men well, one cannot eat well oneself. I seemed to spend most of my time riding all over the place looking for supplies.”
“Then I shall feed you nothing but the very best food,” she said, one of her rare smiles lighting up her drawn face. “Oh, I wish I thought things were going to get better! But I have a horrible feeling they’re going to get worse.” She stood up and began to divest herself of her gown.
“I share your feeling, meum mel,” he said, sitting on his side of the bed and swinging his legs onto it. Sighing luxuriously, he tucked his hands behind his head on the pillow, and smiled. “However, while we live at all, this is one thing cannot be taken from us.”
She crawled in beside him and snuggled her face into his shoulder; his left arm came down and encircled her. “A very nice thing,” she said gruffly. “I love you, Gaius Julius.”
*
When the sixth day of Gaius Marius’s seventh consulship dawned, he had his tribune of the plebs Publius Popillius Laenas convene yet another Plebeian Assembly. Only Marius’s Bardyaei were present in the well of the Comitia to hear the proceedings. For almost two days they had been under orders to behave, had had to clean the city and disappear from sight. But Young Marius was gone to Etruria, and the rostra was bristling again with all those heads. Only three people stood on the rostra—Marius himself, Popillius Laenas, and a prisoner cast in chains.
“This man,” shouted Marius, “tried to procure my death! When I—old and infirm!—was fleeing from Italy, the town of Minturnae gave me solace. Until a troop of hired assassins forced the magistrates of Minturnae to order my execution. Do you see my good friend Burgundus? It was Burgundus deputed to strangle me as I lay in a cell beneath the Minturnaean capitol! All alone and covered in mud. Naked! I, Gaius Marius! The greatest man in the history of Rome! The greatest man Rome will ever produce! A greater man than Alexander of Macedon! Great, great, great!” He ran down, looked bewildered, sought for memory, then grinned. “Burgundus refused to strangle me. And, taking their example from a simple German slave, the whole town of Minturnae refused to see me killed. But before the hired assassins—a paltry lot, they wouldn’t even do the deed themselves!—left Minturnae, I asked their leader who had hired them. ‘Sextus Lucilius,’ he said.”
Marius grinned again, spread his feet and stamped them in what apparently he fancied was a little dance. “When I became consul for the seventh time—what other man has been consul of Rome seven times?—it pleased me to allow Sextus Lucilius to think no one knew he hired those men. For five days he was foolish enough to remain in Rome, deeming himself safe. But this morning before it was light and he was out of his bed, I sent my lictors to arrest him. The charge is treason. He tried to procure the death of Gaius Marius!”
No trial was ever shorter, no vote was ever taken more cavalierly; without counsel, without witnesses, without due form and procedure, the Bardyaei in the well of the Comitia pronounced Sextus Lucilius guilty of treason. Then they voted to have him cast down from the Tarpeian Rock.
“Burgundus, I give the task of casting this man from the rock to you,” said Marius to his hulking servant.
“I will do so gladly, Gaius Marius,” rumbled Burgundus.
The whole assemblage then moved to a better place from which to view the execution; Marius himself, however, remained on the rostra with Popillius Laenas, its height affording it a superb outlook toward the Velabrum. Sextus Lucilius, who had said nothing in his defense nor allowed any expression on his face save contempt, went to his death gallantly. When Burgundus, a great golden glitter in the distance, led Lucilius to the end of the Tarpeian overhang, he didn’t wait to be picked up and tossed away; instead, he leaped of his own accord and almost brought the German down as well, for Burgundus had not let go of his chains.
This defiant independence and the risk to Burgundus angered Marius terribly; dark red in the face, he choked and spluttered, began to roar his outrage at the dismayed Popillius Laenas.
The weak little light still illuminating his mind was snuffed out in a torrent of blood. Gaius Marius fell to the floor of the rostra as if poleaxed, lictors clustering about him, Popillius Laenas calling frantically for a stretcher or a litter. And all those heads of old rivals, old enemies, ringed Marius’s inert body round, teeth beginning to show in the skull’s grin because the birds had feasted.
Cinna, Carbo, Marcus Gratidianus, Magius, and Vergilius came down from the Senate steps at a run, displacing the lictors as they gathered about the fallen form of Gaius Marius.
“He’s still breathing,” said his adopted nephew, Gratidianus.
“Too bad,” said Carbo under his breath.
“Get him home,” said Cinna.
By this time the members of Marius’s slave bodyguard had learned of the disaster and had crowded round the base of the rostra, all weeping, some wailing outlandishly.
Cinna turned to his own chief lictor. “Send to the Campus Martius and summon Quintus Sertorius here to me urgently,” he said. “You may tell him what has happened.”
While Marius’s lictors carried him off on a stretcher and the Bardyaei followed up the hill, still wailing, Cinna, Carbo, Marius Gratidianus, Magius, Vergilius and Popillius Laenas came down off the rostra and waited at its base for Quintus Sertorius; they sat on the top tier of the Comitia well, trying to regain their senses.
“I can’t believe he’s s
till alive!” said Cinna in wonder.
“I think he’d get up and walk if someone stuck two feet of good Roman sword under his ribs,” said Vergilius, scowling.
“What do you intend to do, Lucius Cinna?” asked Marius’s adopted nephew, who agreed with everyone’s attitude but could not admit it, and so preferred to change the subject.
“I’m not sure,” said Cinna, frowning. “That’s why I’m waiting for Quintus Sertorius. I value his counsel.”
An hour later Sertorius arrived.
“It’s the best thing could have happened,” he said to all of them, but particularly to Marius Gratidianus. “Don’t feel disloyal, Marcus Marius. You’re adopted, you have less Marian blood in you than I do. But, Marian though my mother is, I can say it without fear or guilt. His exile drove him mad. He is not the Gaius Marius we used to know.”
“What should we do, Quintus Sertorius?” asked Cinna.
Sertorius looked astonished. “About what? You are the consul, Lucius Cinna! It’s up to you to say, not to me.”
Flushing scarlet, Cinna waved his hand. “About the duties of the consul, Quintus Sertorius, I am in no doubt!” he snapped. “What I called you here for was to ask you how best we can rid ourselves of the Bardyaei.”
“Oh, I see,” said Sertorius slowly. He was still wearing a bandage about his left eye, but the discharge seemed to have dried up, and he looked comfortable enough with his handicap.
“Until the Bardyaei are disbanded, Rome still belongs to Marius,” said Cinna. “The thing is, I doubt they’ll want to be disbanded. They’ve had a taste of terrorizing a great city. Why should they stop because Gaius Marius is incapacitated?”
“They can be stopped,” said Sertorius, smiling nastily. “I can kill them.”
Carbo looked overjoyed. “Good!” he said. “I’ll go and fetch whatever men are left across the river.”
“No, no!” cried Cinna, horrified. “Another battle in the streets of Rome? We don’t dare after the past six days!”
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