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

by Colleen McCullough

  Sulla made up his mind. “I will move in two divisions of four legions each,” he said, slapping his hands on his thighs. “I will retain the high command myself, but I will not command either division. For want of a better way to distinguish them, I’ll call them the left and the right, and unless I change my orders after we arrive, that is how they’ll fight. Left and right of the field. No center. I haven’t enough men. Vatia, you will command the left, with Dolabella as your second-in-command. Crassus, you’ll command the right, with Torquatus as your second-in-command.”

  As he spoke, Sulla’s eyes rested upon Dolabella, saw the anger and outrage; no need to look at Marcus Crassus, he would not betray his feelings.

  “That is what I want,” he said harshly, spitting out the words because they shaped themselves poorly without teeth. “I don’t have time for argument. You’ve all thrown in your lots with me, you’ve given me the ultimate decisions. Now you’ll do as you’re told. All I expect of you is the will to fight in the way I command you to fight.”

  Dolabella stood back at the door and allowed the other three to precede him; then he turned back. “A word with you alone, Lucius Cornelius,” he said.

  “If it’s quick.”

  A Cornelius and a remote relation of Sulla’s, Dolabella was not from a branch of that great family which had managed to acquire the luster of the Scipiones—or even of the Sullae; if he had anything in common with most of the Cornelii, it was his homeliness—plump cheeks, a frowning face, eyes a little too close together. Ambitious and with a reputation for depravity, he and his first cousin, the younger Dolabella, were determined to win greater prominence for their branch of the family.

  “I could break you, Sulla,” Dolabella said. “All I have to do is make it impossible for you to win tomorrow’s fight. And I imagine you understand that I’ll change sides so fast the opposition will end in believing I was always with them.”

  “Do go on!” said Sulla in the most friendly fashion when Dolabella paused to see how this speech had been received.

  “However, I am willing to lie down under your decision to promote Marcus Crassus over my head. On one condition.”

  “Which is?”

  “That next year, I am consul.”

  “Done!” cried Sulla with the greatest goodwill.

  Dolabella blinked. “You’re not put out?” he asked.

  “Nothing puts me out anymore, my dear Dolabella,” said Sulla, escorting his legate to the door. “At the moment it makes little odds to me who is consul next year. What matters at the moment is who commands on the field tomorrow. And I see that I was right to prefer Marcus Crassus. Good night!”

  *

  The seven hundred horsemen under the command of Octavius Balbus arrived outside Pompey Strabo’s camp about the middle of the morning on the first day of November. There was absolutely nothing Balbus could have done had he been put to it; his horses were so blown that they stood with heads hanging, sides heaving and white with sweat, mouths dripping foam, while their riders stood alongside them and tried to comfort them by loosening girths and speaking soft endearments. For this reason Balbus had not halted too close to the enemy—let them think his force was ready for action! So he arranged it in what appeared to be a charge formation, had his troopers brandish their lances and pretend to shout messages back to an unseen army of infantry in their rear.

  It was evident that the attack upon Rome had not yet begun. The Colline Gate stood in majestic isolation, its portcullis down and its two mighty oak doors closed; the battlements of the two towers which flanked it were alive with heads, and the walls which ran away on either side were heavily manned. Balbus’s arrival had provoked sudden activity within the enemy camp, where soldiers were pouring out of the southeastern gate and lining up to hold off a cavalry onslaught; of enemy cavalry there was no sign, and Balbus could only hope that none was concealed.

  Each trooper on the march carried a leather bucket tied to his left rear saddle horn to water his horse; while the front rank carried on with the farce of a coming charge and an invisible army of foot soldiers behind, other troopers ran with the buckets to various fountains in the vicinity and filled them. As soon as the horses could safely be watered, Octavius Balbus intended that the business should be finished in short order.

  So successful was this mock show of aggression that nothing further had happened when Sulla and his infantry arrived some four hours later, in the early afternoon. His men were in much the same condition as Balbus’s horses had been; exhausted, blown, legs trembling with the effort of marching at the double across twenty miles of sometimes steep terrain.

  “Well, we can’t possibly attack today,” said Vatia after he and Sulla had ridden with the other legates to inspect the ground and see what sort of battle was going to develop.

  “Why not?” asked Sulla.

  Vatia looked blank. “They’re too tired to fight!”

  “Tired they may be, but fight they will,” said Sulla.

  “You can’t, Lucius Cornelius! You’d lose!”

  “I can, and I won’t,” said Sulla grimly. “Look, Vatia, we have to fight today! This war has got to end, and here and now is where and when it must end. The Samnites know how hard we’ve marched, the Samnites know the odds are in their favor today more than on any other day. If we don’t offer battle today, the day they believe they have their best chance of winning, who knows what might happen tomorrow? What’s to stop the Samnites packing up in the night and vanishing to choose another venue? Disappearing perhaps for months? Until the spring, or even next summer? Next autumn? No, Vatia, we fight today. Because today the Samnites are in the mood to see us dead on the field of the Colline Gate.”

  While his soldiers rested, ate and drank, Sulla went among them on foot to tell them in a more personal way than the usual speech from a rostra that somehow they had to find the strength and the endurance to fight. That if they waited to recover, the war might go on and on. Most of them had been with him for years and could be said in truth to love him, but even the legions which had belonged to Scipio Asiagenus had felt his hand for long enough to know themselves his men. He didn’t look like the wonderful, godlike being to whom they had offered a Grass Crown outside Nola all those campaigns ago, but he was theirs—and hadn’t they grizzled and wrinkled and grown a bit creaky in the joints too? So when he went among them and asked them to fight, they lifted laconic hands and told him not to worry, they’d fix the Samnites.

  A bare two hours before darkness, battle was joined. The three legions which had belonged to Scipio Asiagenus comprised the major part of Sulla’s left division, so while he did not assume command of the left, Sulla elected to remain in its area of operation. Rather than bestride his customary mule, he chose to mount a white horse, and had told his men that he would do so. That way they would know him, see him if he came to their part of the fight. Choosing a knoll which gave him a fair perspective of the field, he sat upon the white animal watching the conflict develop. Those inside Rome, he noted, had opened the doors of the Colline Gate and raised the portcullis, though no one issued out to participate in the battle.

  The enemy division facing his left was the more formidable, for it was composed entirely of Samnites and commanded by Pontius Telesinus, but at forty thousand it was less numerous—some kind of compensation, thought Sulla, touching his groom with a foot, the signal for the fellow to lead his horse onward. No rider, he didn’t trust this white force of nature, and had preferred that it be led. Yes, his left was falling back, he would have to go there. On lower ground, Vatia probably couldn’t see that one of his worst problems was the open gate into the city; as the Samnites pushed forward stabbing and slashing upward with their short infantry swords, some of Vatia’s men were slipping through the gate rather than standing and holding.

  Just before he entered the melee, he heard the sharp smack of his groom’s hand on the horse’s shoulder, had the presence of mind to lean forward and grab its mane in both hands as it took of
f at a gallop. One glance behind showed him why; two Samnite spearmen had launched their weapons simultaneously at him, and he ought to have fallen. That he had not was thanks to the groom, who had made the horse bolt. Then the groom caught up and hung on to the creature’s plumy tail; Sulla came to a halt unscathed and still in the saddle.

  A smile of thanks for his groom, and Sulla waded into the thick of the battle with his sword in his hand and a small cavalry shield to protect his left side. He found some men he knew and ordered them to drop the portcullis—which, he noted in some amusement, they did with scant regard for those beneath it at the time it fell. The measure worked; having nowhere now to retreat, Scipio’s legions stood and held while the single legion of veterans began the slow and steady job of pushing the enemy back.

  How Crassus and the right were faring, Sulla had no idea; even from his knoll they had been too far away for him to supervise, and he had known his left was his weakness from the beginning. If anybody could cope, it was Crassus and the four veteran legions under his command.

  Night fell but the fight went on, aided by thousands of torches held on high by those atop Rome’s walls. And, gaining its second wind, Sulla’s left took heart. He himself was still among it, cheering Scipio’s frightened men on, doing his share of hand—to—hand combat because his groom, splendid fellow, never allowed the horse to become an encumbrance.

  Perhaps two hours later, the Samnite host opposing Sulla’s left broke and retreated inside Pompey Strabo’s camp, where they proved too exhausted to keep Sulla out. Hoarse from shouting, Sulla and Vatia and Dolabella urged a finish, and their men cut the Samnites to pieces within the camp. Pontius Telesinus fell with his face split in two, and the heart went out of his men.

  “No prisoners,” said Sulla. “Kill the lot, with arrows if they clump together and try to surrender.”

  At that stage in a battle so bitterly fought, it would have been more difficult to persuade the soldiers to spare their foes, so the Samnites perished.

  It was only after the rout was complete that Sulla, now back on his trusty mule, found time to wonder about the fate of Crassus. Of the right division there was no sign; but nor was there sign of an enemy. Crassus and his opponents had vanished.

  About the middle of the night a messenger came. Sulla was prowling through Pompey Strabo’s old camp making sure the still bodies lying everywhere were well and truly dead, but paused to see the man, hoping for news.

  “Are you sent from Marcus Crassus?” he asked the man.

  “I am,” said the man, who did not look downcast.

  “Where is Marcus Crassus?”

  “At Antemnae.”

  “Antemnae?”

  “The enemy broke and fled there before nightfall, and Marcus Crassus followed. Another battle took place in Antemnae. We won! Marcus Crassus has sent me to ask for food and wine for his men.”

  Grinning widely, Sulla shouted orders that the requested provisions be found, and then, riding upon his mule, accompanied the train of pack animals up the Via Salaria to Antemnae, just a few miles away. There he and Vatia found the reeling town trying to regain its breath, having played involuntary host to a battle which had made a wreck of it. Houses were burning fiercely, bucket brigades toiled to prevent the fires from spreading, and everywhere the bodies sprawled in death, trampled underfoot by panicked townsfolk striving to save their own lives and belongings.

  Crassus was waiting on the far side of Antemnae, where in a field he had gathered the enemy survivors.

  “About six thousand of them,” he said to Sulla. “Vatia had the Samnites—I inherited the Lucanians, the Capuans, and Carbo’s remnants. Tiberius Gutta fell on the field, Marcus Lamponius I think escaped, and I have Brutus Damasippus, Carrinas and Censorinus among the prisoners.”

  “Good work!” said Sulla, showing his gums in the broadest of smiles. “It didn’t please Dolabella and I had to promise him a consulship next year to get him to go along, but I knew I’d picked the right man in you, Marcus Crassus!”

  Vatia swung his head to stare at Sulla, aghast. “What? Dolabella demanded that? Cunnus! Mentula! Verpa! Fellator!”

  “Never mind, Vatia, you’ll get your consulship too,” soothed Sulla, still smiling. “Dolabella will do no good by it. He’ll go too far when he goes to govern his province and he’ll spend the rest of his days in exile in Massilia with all the other intemperate fools.” He waved a hand at the pack animals. “Now where do you want your little snack, Marcus Crassus?’’

  “If I can find somewhere else to put my prisoners, here, I think,” said the stolid Crassus, who didn’t look in the least as if he had just won a great victory.

  “I brought Balbus’s cavalry with me to escort the prisoners to the Villa Publica at once,” said Sulla. “By the time they’re moving, it will be dawn.”

  While Octavius Balbus rounded up the exhausted enemy who had survived Antemnae, Sulla summoned Censorinus, Carrinas and Brutus Damasippus before him. Defeated though they were, none of them looked beaten.

  “Aha! Think you’re going to fight again another day, eh?” Sulla asked, smiling again, but mirthlessly. “Well, my Roman friends, you are not. Pontius Telesinus is dead, and I had the Samnite survivors shot with arrows. Since you allied yourselves with Samnites and Lucanians, I hold you no Romans. Therefore you will not be tried for treason. You will be executed: Now.”

  Thus it was that the three most implacable foes of the whole war were beheaded in a field outside Antemnae, without trial or notice. The bodies were thrown into the huge common grave being dug for all the enemy dead, but Sulla had the heads put in a sack.

  “Catilina, my friend,” he said to Lucius Sergius Catilina, who had ridden with him and Vatia, “take these, find the head of Tiberius Gutta, add the head of Pontius Telesinus when you get back to the Colline Gate, and then ride with them for Ofella. Tell him to load them one by one into his most powerful piece of artillery, and fire them one by one over the walls of Praeneste.”

  Catilina’s darkly handsome face brightened, looked alert. “Gladly, Lucius Cornelius. May I ask a favor?”

  “Ask. But I don’t promise.”

  “Let me go into Rome and find Marcus Marius Gratidianus! I want his head. If Young Marius looks on his head too, he’ll know that Rome is yours and his own career is at an end.”

  Slowly Sulla shook his head—but not in refusal. “Oh, Catilina, you are one of my most precious possessions! How I do love you! Gratidianus is your brother-in-law.”

  “Was my brother-in-law,” said Catilina gently, and added, “My wife died not long before I joined you.” What he did not say was that he had been suspected by Gratidianus of murdering her in order to pursue another liaison more comfortably.

  “Well, Gratidianus would have to go sooner or later anyway,” said Sulla, and turned away with a shrug. “Add his head to your collection if you think it will impress Young Marius.”

  Matters thus tidily disposed of, Sulla and Vatia and the legates who had accompanied them settled down with Crassus and Torquatus and the men of the right division to a jolly feast while Antemnae burned and Lucius Sergius Catilina went happily about his grisly business.

  Seeming not to need sleep, Sulla rode thereafter back to Rome, but did not enter the city. His messenger sent on ahead summoned the Senate to a meeting in the temple of Bellona on the Campus Martius. En route to Bellona, he paused to make sure the six thousand prisoners were assembled in the grounds of the Villa Publica (which was close to the temple of Bellona), and issued certain orders; after that he completed his journey, and dismounted from his mule in the rather desolate and unkempt open space in front of the temple always called “Enemy Territory.”

  No one of course had dared not to answer Sulla’s summons, so about a hundred men waited inside. They all stood; it did not seem the right thing to do to wait for Sulla seated on their folding stools. A few men looked serenely comfortable—Catulus, Hortensius, Lepidus—and some looked terrified—a Flaccus or two, a Fimbria,
a minor Carbo—but most bore the look of sheep, vacuous yet skittish.

  Clad in armor but bareheaded, Sulla passed through their ranks as if they did not exist and mounted the podium of Bellona’s statue, which had been added to her temple after it became very fashionable to anthropomorphize even the old Roman gods; as she too was clad for war, she matched Sulla very well, even to the fierce look on her too—Greek face. She, however, owned a kind of beauty, whereas Sulla had none. To most of the men present, his appearance came as an absolute shock, though no one dared to stir. The wig of orange curls was slightly askew, the scarlet tunic filthy, the red patches on his face standing out amid remnants of near—albino skin like lakes of blood on snow. Many among them grieved, but for differing reasons: some because they had known him well and liked him, others because they had at least expected the new Master of Rome to look a fitting master. This man looked more a ruined travesty.

  When he spoke his lips flapped, and some of his words were hard to distinguish. Until, that is, he got under way, when self-preservation stimulated his audience to total comprehension.

  “I can see I’m back not a moment too soon!” he said. “The Enemy Territory is full of weeds—everything needs a fresh coat of paint and a good wash—the stones of the road bases are poking through what’s left of the surface—laundresses are using the Villa Publica to hang out their washing—a wonderful job you’ve been doing of caring for Rome! Fools! Knaves! Jackasses!”

  His address probably continued in the same vein—biting, sarcastic, bitter. But after he yelled “Jackasses!” his words were drowned by a hideous cacophony of noises from the direction of the Villa Publica—screams, howls, shrieks. Bloodcurdling! At first everyone pretended they could still hear him, but then the sounds became just too alarming, too horrifying; the senators began to move, mutter, exchange terrified glances.

  As suddenly as it had begun, the din died away.