“What, little sheep, are you frightened?” jeered Sulla. “But there’s no need to be frightened! What you hear is only my men admonishing a few criminals.”
Whereupon he scrambled down from his perch between Bellona’s feet and walked out without seeming to see a single member of the Senate of Rome.
“Oh dear, he’s really not in a good mood!” said Catulus to his brother-in-law Hortensius.
“Looking like that, I’m not surprised,” said Hortensius.
“He only dragged us here to listen to that,” said Lepidus. “Who was he admonishing, do you imagine?”
“His prisoners,” said Catulus.
As proved to be the case; while Sulla had been speaking to the Senate, his men had executed the six thousand prisoners at the Villa Publica with sword and arrow.
“I am going to be extremely well behaved on all occasions,” said Catulus to Hortensius.
“Why, in particular?” asked Hortensius, who was a far more arrogant and positive man.
“Because Lepidus was right. Sulla only summoned us here to listen to the noise of the men who opposed him dying. What he says doesn’t matter one iota. But what he does matters enormously to any of us who want to live. We will have to behave ourselves and try not to annoy him.”
Hortensius shrugged. “I think you’re overreacting, my dear Quintus Lutatius. In a few weeks he’ll be gone. He’ll get the Senate and the Assemblies to legalize his deeds and give him back his imperium, then he’ll return to the ranks of the consulars in the front row, and Rome will be able to get on with her normal business.”
“Do you really think so?” Catulus shivered. “How he’ll do it I have no idea, but I believe we’re going to have Sulla’s unnerving eyes on us from a position of superior power for a long time to come.”
*
Sulla arrived at Praeneste the following day, the third one of the month of November.
Ofella greeted him cheerfully, and gestured toward two sad men who stood under guard nearby. “Know them?” he asked.
“Possibly, but I can’t find their names.”
“Two junior tribunes attached to Scipio’s legions. They came galloping like a pair of Greek jockeys the morning after you fought outside the Colline Gate and tried to tell me that the battle was lost and you were dead.”
“What, Ofella? Didn’t you believe them?”
Ofella laughed heartily. “I know you better than that, Lucius Cornelius! It will take more than a few Samnites to kill you.” And with the flourish of a magician producing a rabbit out of a chamber pot, Ofella reached behind him and displayed the head of Young Marius.
“Ah!” said Sulla, inspecting it closely. “Handsome fellow, wasn’t he? Took after his mother in looks, of course. Don’t know who he took after in cleverness, but it certainly wasn’t his dad.” Satisfied, he waved the head away. “Keep it for the time being. So Praeneste surrendered?”
“Almost immediately after I fired in the heads Catilina brought me. The gates popped open and they flooded out waving white flags and beating their breasts.”
“Young Marius too?” asked Sulla, surprised.
“Oh, no! He took to the sewers, looking for some way to escape. But I’d had all the outflows barred months before. We found him huddled against one such with his sword in his belly and his Greek servant weeping nearby,” Ofella said.
“Well, he’s the last of them!” said Sulla triumphantly.
Ofella glanced at him sharply; it wasn’t like Lucius Cornelius Sulla to forget anything! “There’s still one at large,” he said quickly, then could have bitten off his tongue. This was not a man to remind that he too had shortcomings!
But Sulla appeared unruffled. A slow smile grew. “Carbo, I suppose you mean?”
“Yes, Carbo.”
“Carbo is dead too, my dear Ofella. Young Pompeius took him captive and executed him for treason in the agora at Lilybaeum late in September. Remarkable fellow, Pompeius! I thought it would take him many months to organize Sicily and round up Carbo, but he did the lot in one month. And found the time to send me Carbo’s head by special messenger! Pickled in a jar of vinegar! Unmistakably him.” And Sulla chuckled.
“What about Old Brutus?”
“Committed suicide rather than tell Pompeius whereabouts Carbo had gone. Not that it mattered. The crew of his ship—he was trying to raise a fleet for Carbo—told Pompeius everything, of course. So my amazingly efficient young legate sent his brother-in-law off to Cossura, whence Carbo had fled, and had him brought back to Lilybaeum in chains. But I got three heads from Pompeius, not two. Carbo, Old Brutus, and Soranus.”
“Soranus? Do you mean Quintus Valerius Soranus the scholar, who was tribune of the plebs?’’
“The very same.”
“But why? What did he do?” asked Ofella, bewildered.
“He shouted the secret name of Rome out loud from the rostra,” said Sulla.
Ofella’s jaw dropped, he shivered. “Jupiter!”
“Luckily,” lied Sulla blandly, “the Great God stoppered up every ear in the Forum, so Soranus shouted to the deaf. All is well, my dear Ofella. Rome will survive.”
“Oh, that’s a relief!” gasped Ofella, wiping the sweat from his brow. “I’ve heard of strange doings, but to tell Rome’s secret name—it passes all imagination!” Something else occurred to him; he couldn’t help but ask: “What was Pompeius doing in Sicily, Lucius Cornelius?”
“Securing the grain harvest for me.”
“I’d heard something to that effect, but I confess I didn’t believe it. He’s a kid.”
“Mmmm,” agreed Sulla pensively. “However, what Young Marius didn’t inherit from his father, young Pompeius certainly grabbed from Pompeius Strabo! And more besides.”
“So the kid will be coming home soon,” said Ofella, not very enamored of this new star in Sulla’s sky; he had thought himself without rival in that firmament!
“Not yet,” said Sulla in a matter—of—fact tone. “I sent him on to Africa to secure our province for me. I believe he is at this moment doing just that.” He pointed down into No Man’s Land, where a great crowd of men stood abjectly in the chilly sun. “Are they those who surrendered bearing arms?”
“Yes. In number, twelve thousand. A mixed catch,” said Ofella, glad to see the subject change. “Some Romans who belonged to Young Marius, a good many Praenestians, and some Samnites for good measure. Do you want to look at them more closely?”
It seemed Sulla did. But not for long. He pardoned the Romans among the crowd, then ordered the Praenestians and Samnites executed on the spot. After which he made the surviving citizens of Praeneste—old men, women, children—bury the bodies in No Man’s Land. He toured the town, never having been there before, and frowned in anger to see the shambles to which Young Marius’s need for timber to build his siege tower had reduced the precinct of Fortuna Primigenia.
“I am Fortune’s favorite,” he said to those members of the town council who had not died in No Man’s Land, “and I shall see that your Fortuna Primigenia acquires the most splendid precinct in all of Italy. But at Praeneste’s expense.”
On the fourth day of November, Sulla rode to Norba, though he knew its fate long before he reached it.
“They agreed to surrender,” said Mamercus, tight—lipped with anger, “and then they torched the town before killing every last person in there—murder, suicide. Women, children, Ahenobarbus’s soldiers, all the men of the town died rather than surrender. I’m sorry, Lucius Cornelius. There will be no plunder or prisoners from Norba.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Sulla indifferently. “The haul from Praeneste was huge. I doubt Norba could have yielded much of use or note.”
And on the fifth day of November, when the newly risen sun was glancing off the gilded statues atop the temple roofs and that fresh light made the city seem less shabby, Lucius Cornelius Sulla entered Rome. He rode in through the Capena Gate, and in solemn procession. His groom led the white horse whi
ch had borne him safely through the battle at the Colline Gate, and he wore his best suit of armor, its silver muscled cuirass tooled with a scene representing his own army offering him his Grass Crown outside the walls of Nola. Paired with him and clad in purple-bordered toga rode Lucius Valerius Flaccus, the Princeps Senatus, and behind him rode his legates in pairs, including Metellus Pius and Varro Lucullus, who had been summoned from Italian Gaul four days earlier, and had driven hard to be here on this great occasion. Of all the ones who were to matter in the future, only Pompey and Varro the Sabine were not present.
His sole military escort was the seven hundred troopers who had saved him by bluffing the Samnites; his army was back in the defile, tearing down its ramparts so that traffic on the Via Latina could move again. After that, there was Ofella’s wall to dismember and a vast stockpile of building material to dump in several fields. Much of the tufa block had been fragmented in the demolition, and Sulla knew what he was going to do with that; it would be incorporated into the opus incertum construction of the new temple of Fortuna Primigenia in Praeneste. No trace of the hostilities must remain.
Many people turned out of doors to see him enter the city; no matter how fraught with peril it was, no Roman could ever resist a spectacle, and this moment belonged to History. Many who saw him ride in genuinely believed they were witnessing the death throes of the Republic; rumor insisted that Sulla intended to make himself King of Rome. How else could he hang on to power? For how—given what he had done—could he dare relinquish power? And, it was quickly noted, a special squad of cavalry rode just behind the last pair of legates, their spears held upright; impaled on those lances were the heads of Carbo and Young Marius, Carrinas and Censorinus, Old Brutus and Marius Gratidianus, Brutus Damasippus and Pontius Telesinus, Gutta of Capua and Soranus—and Gaius Papius Mutilus of the Samnites.
*
Mutilus had heard the news of the battle at the Colline Gate a day after, and wept so loudly that Bastia came to see what was the matter with him.
“Lost, all lost!” he cried to her, forgetting the way she had insulted and tormented him, only seeing the one person left to whom he was bound by ties of family and time. “My army is dead! Sulla has won! Sulla will be King of Rome and Samnium will be no more!”
For perhaps as long as it would have taken to light all the wicks of a small chandelier, Bastia stared at the devastated man upon his couch. She made no move to comfort him, said no words of comfort either, just stood very still, eyes wide. And then a look crept into them of knowledge and resolution; her vivid face grew cold and hard. She clapped her hands.
“Yes, domina?” asked the steward from the doorway, gazing in consternation at his weeping master.
“Find his German and ready his litter,” said Bastia.
“Domina?” the steward asked, bewildered.
“Don’t just stand there, do as I say! At once!”
The steward gulped, disappeared.
Tears drying, Mutilus gaped at his wife. “What is this?’’
“I want you out of here,” she said through clenched teeth. “I want no part of this defeat! I want to keep my home, my money, my life! So out you go, Gaius Papius! Go back to Aesernia, or go to Bovianum—or anywhere else you have a house! Anywhere but this house! I do not intend to go down with you.”
“I don’t believe this!” he gasped.
“You’d better believe it! Out you go!”
“But I’m paralyzed, Bastia! I am your husband, and I’m paralyzed! Can’t you find pity in you, if not love?”
“I neither love you nor pity you,” she said harshly. “It was all your stupid, futile plotting and fighting against Rome took the power out of your legs—took away your use to me—took away the children I might have had—and all the pleasure in being a part of your life. For nearly seven years I’ve lived here alone while you schemed and intrigued in Aesernia—and when you did condescend to visit me, you stank of shit and piss, and ordered me about—oh no, Gaius Papius Mutilus, I am done with you! Out you go!”
And because his mind could not encompass the extent of his ruin, Mutilus made no protest when his German attendant took him from the couch and carried him through the front door to where his litter stood at the bottom of the steps. Bastia had followed behind like an image of the Gorgon, beautiful and evil, with eyes that could turn a man to stone and hissing hair. So quickly did she slam the door that the edge of his cloak caught in it and pulled the German up with a jerk. Shifting the full weight of his master to his left arm, the German began to tug at the cloak to free it.
On his belt Gaius Papius Mutilus wore a military dagger, a mute reminder of the days when he had been a Samnite warrior. Out it came; he pressed the top of his head against the wood of the door and cut his throat. Blood sprayed everywhere, drenched the door and pooled upon the steps, soaked the shrieking German, whose cries brought people running from up and down the narrow street. The last thing Gaius Papius Mutilus saw was his Gorgon wife, who had opened the door in time to receive the final spurt of his blood.
“I curse you, woman!” he tried to say.
But she didn’t hear. Nor did she seem stricken, frightened, surprised. Instead, she held the door wide and snapped at the weeping German, “Bring him in!” And inside, when her husband’s corpse was laid upon the floor, she said, “Cut off his head. I will send it to Sulla as my gift.”
Bastia was as good as her word; she sent her husband’s head to Sulla with her compliments. But the story Sulla heard from the wretched steward compelled by his mistress to bring the gift did not flatter Bastia. He handed the head of his old enemy to one of the military tribunes attached to his staff, and said without expression, “Kill the woman who sent me this. I want her dead.”
*
And so the tally was almost complete. With the single exception of Marcus Lamponius of Lucania, every powerful enemy who had opposed Sulla’s return to Italy was dead. Had he wished it, Sulla could indeed have made himself undisputed King of Rome.
But he had found a solution more to the liking of one who firmly believed in all the traditions of a Republican mos maiorum, and thus rode through the middle of the Circus Maximus absolutely free of kingly intent.
He was old and ill, and for fifty-eight years he had done battle against a mindless conspiracy of circumstances and events which had succeeded time and time again in stripping from him the pleasures of justice and reward, the rightful place in Rome’s scheme of things to which birth and ability entitled him. No choice had he been offered, no opportunity to pursue his ascent of the cursus honorum legally, honorably. At every turn someone or something had blocked him, made the straight and legal way impossible. So here he was, riding in the wrong direction down the length of the empty Circus Maximus, a fifty-eight-year-old wreck, his bowels knotted with the twin fires of triumph and loss. Master of Rome. The First Man in Rome. Vindication at last. And yet the disappointments of his age and his ugliness and his approaching death curdled his joy with the sourest sadness, destroyed pleasure, exacerbated pain. How late, how bitter, how warped was this victory...
He didn’t think of the Rome he now held at his mercy with love or idealism; the price had been too high. Nor did he look forward to the work he knew he had to do. What he most desired was peace, leisure, the fulfillment of a thousand sexual fantasies, head—spinning drunken binges, total freedom from care and from responsibility. So why couldn’t he have those things? Because of Rome, because of duty, because he couldn’t bear the thought of laying down his job with so much work undone. The only reason he rode in the wrong direction down the length of the empty Circus Maximus lay in the knowledge that there was a mountain of work to be done. And he had to do it. There was literally no one else who could.
He chose to assemble Senate and People together in the lower Forum Romanum, and speak to both from the rostra. Not with complete truth—was it Scaurus who had called him politically nonchalant? He couldn’t remember. But there was too much of the politician in him to b
e completely truthful, so he blandly ignored the fact that it had been he who pinned up the first head on the rostra—Sulpicius, to frighten Cinna.
“This hideous practice which has come into being so very recently that I was urban praetor in a Rome who did not know of it”—he turned to gesture at the row of speared heads—“will not cease until the proper traditions of the mos maiorum have been totally restored and the old, beloved Republic rises again out of the ashes to which it has been reduced. I have heard it said that I intend to make myself King of Rome! No, Quirites, I do not! Condemn myself to however many years I have left of intrigues and plots, rebellions and reprisals? No, I will not! I have worked long and hard in the service of Rome, and I have earned the reward of spending my last days free of care and free of responsibilities—free of Rome! So one thing I can promise you, Senate and People both—I will not set myself up as King of Rome, or enjoy one single moment of the power I must retain until my work is over.”
Perhaps no one had really expected this, even men as close to Sulla as Vatia and Metellus Pius, but as Sulla went on, some men began to understand that Sulla had shared his secrets with one other—the Princeps Senatus, Lucius Valerius Flaccus, who stood on the rostra with him, and did not look surprised at one word Sulla was saying.
“The consuls are dead,” Sulla went on, hand indicating the heads of Carbo and Young Marius, “and the fasces must go back to the Fathers, be laid upon their couch in the temple of Venus Libitina until new consuls are elected. Rome must have an interrex, and the law is specific. Our Leader of the House, Lucius Valerius Flaccus, is the senior patrician of the Senate, of his decury, of his family.” Sulla turned to Flaccus Princeps Senatus. “You are the first interrex. Please assume that office and acquit yourself of all its duties for the five days of your interregnum.”
“So far, so good,” whispered Hortensius to Catulus. “He has done exactly what he ought to do, appoint an interrex.”
“Tace!’’ growled Catulus, who was finding it difficult to understand every word Sulla was saying.
“Before our Leader of the House takes over the conduct of this meeting,” Sulla said slowly and carefully, “there are one or two things I wish to say. Rome is safe under my care, no one will come to any harm. Just law will be returned. The Republic will go back to its days of glory. But those are all things which must come from the decisions of our interrex, so I shall not dwell upon them any further. What I do want to say is that I have been well served by fine men, and it is time to thank them. I will start with those who are not here today. Gnaeus Pompeius, who has secured the grain supply from Sicily, and has thereby guaranteed that Rome will not be hungry this winter... Lucius Marcius Philippus, who last year secured the grain supply from Sardinia, and this year had to contend with the man who was sent against him, Quintus Antonius Balbus. He did contend with Antonius, who is dead. Sardinia is safe…. In Asia I left three splendid men behind to care for Rome’s richest and most precious province—Lucius Licinius Murena, Lucius Licinius Lucullus, and Gaius Scribonius Curio…. And here standing with me are the men who have been my loyalest followers through times of hardship and despair—Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius and his legate, Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus—Publius Servilius Vatia—the elder Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella—Marcus Licinius Crassus …”
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