“She was seven.”
“I see. A literal marriage of children. Faugh! Cinna was hungry, wasn’t he?”
“Quite so,” said Cotta uncomfortably. “Anyway, the boy did not take kindly to his flaminate. He insisted that until he put on the toga of manhood he would pursue the customary activities of a noble Roman youth. So he went to the Campus Martius and there did his military exercises. He fenced, shot arrows, cast spears—and revealed a talent for whatever he was called upon to do. I am told he used to do something remarkable—he would ride a very fleet horse at the full gallop with both hands behind his back—and no saddle! The old fellows of the Campus Martius remember him well and deem his flaminate a shame in view of his natural aptitude for soldiering. For his other behavior, my source is his mother—my half sister, Aurelia. According to her, he did not adhere to the stipulated diet, he pared his nails with an iron knife, had his hair cut with an iron razor, and wore knots and buckles.”
“What happened when he donned the toga virilis?”’
“He changed radically,” said Cotta, considerable surprise in his voice. “The rebellion – if indeed it had been rebellion – ceased. He had always performed his religious duties with scrupulous care, but then he put on his apex and laena permanently, and adhered to all the prohibitions. His mother says he liked his role no better, but had become reconciled.”
“I see.” Sulla kicked his heels softly against the wall, then said, “It begins to sound quite satisfactory, Cotta. What conclusion have you come to about him and his flaminate?”
Cotta frowned. “There is one difficulty. Did we have the full set of prophetic books available to us, we might have been able to elucidate the matter. But we do not, of course. So we have found it impossible to form a conclusive opinion. There appears to be no doubt that the boy is legally the flamen Dialis, but we are not so sure from the religious viewpoint.”
“Why?”
“It all hinges upon the civic status of Caesar’s wife. Cinnilla, they call her. Now twelve years of age. Of one thing we are absolutely positive – the flaminate Dialis is a dual entity which involves wife as much as it does husband. She has her religious title of flaminica Dialis, she is under the same taboos, and she has her own religious duties. If she does not fulfill the religious criteria, then the whole flaminate is in doubt. And we have come to the conclusion that she does not fulfill the religious criteria, Lucius Cornelius.”
“Really? How have you reached that conclusion, Cotta?” Sulla kicked the wall harder, thought of something else. “Has the marriage been consummated?”
“No, it has not. The child Cinnilla has lived with my sister and my sister’s family since she married young Caesar. And my sister is a very proper Roman noblewoman,” said Cotta.
Sulla smiled briefly. “I know she’s proper,” he said.
“Yes, well …” Cotta shifted uneasily, remembering the debates which had raged in the Cotta household about the nature of the friendship between Aurelia and Sulla; he was also aware that he was about to criticize one of Sulla’s new proscription laws. But in he plunged bravely, determined to get it over and done with. “We think Caesar is the flamen Dialis, but that his wife is not the flaminica. At least, that is how we have interpreted your laws of proscription, which, in the matter of under—age children of the proscribed, do not make it clear whether these children are subject to the lex Minicia. Cinna’s son was of age when his father was proscribed, therefore his citizenship was not in question. But what about the citizen status of under—age children, especially girls? Does your law intend judgment under the lex Minicia, or—as with conviction and exile by a court—does the father’s loss of citizenship extend only to himself? That is what we had to decide. And given the severity of your laws of proscription in relation to the rights of children and other heirs, we came to the conclusion that the lex Minicia de liberis does apply.”
“Piglet dear, what do you have to say?” asked the Dictator demurely, entirely ignoring the implication of a legislative cloudiness. “Take your time, take your time! I have nothing else to do today.”
Metellus Pius flushed. “As Gaius Cotta says, the law of a child’s citizen status does apply. When one parent is not a Roman citizen, the child cannot be a Roman citizen. So Caesar’s wife is not a Roman citizen and cannot therefore be the flaminica Dialis under religious law.”
“Brilliant, brilliant! You got that out without a single mistake, Piglet!” Drum, drum went Sulla’s heels. “So it is all my fault, eh? I left a law up to interpretation instead of spelling every detail out.”
Cotta drew a deep breath. “Yes,” he said heroically.
“That is all very true, Lucius Cornelius,” said Vatia, adding his mite. “However, we are fully aware that our interpretation may be wrong. We respectfully ask for your direction.”
“Well,” said Sulla, sliding off the wall, “it seems to me that the best way out of this dilemma is to have Caesar find a new flaminica. Though he must have been married confarreatio, in the eyes of both civil and religious law a divorce is possible. It is my opinion that Caesar must divorce Cinna’s daughter, who is not acceptable to the Great God as his flaminica.”
“An annulment, surely!” said Cotta.
“A divorce,” said Sulla firmly. “Though all and sundry may swear that the marriage is not consummated—and though we could have the Vestals examine the girl’s hymen—we are dealing with Jupiter Best and Greatest. You have pointed out to me that my laws are open to interpretation. In fact, you have gone so far as to interpret them—without coming to consult with me before making your decision. Therein lies your mistake. You should have consulted me. But since you did not, you must now live with the consequences. A diffarreatio divorce.”
Cotta winced. “Diffarreatio is a dreadful business!”
“I weep to see your pain, Cotta.”
“Then I shall inform the boy,” said Cotta, mouth set.
Sulla put out his hand. “No!” he said, quite sharply. “Say nothing to the boy, nothing at all! Just tell him to come to my house tomorrow before the dinner hour. I prefer to tell him myself, is that clear?”
*
“And so,” said Cotta to Caesar and Aurelia a short time later, “you must see Sulla, nephew.”
Both Caesar and his mother were looking strained, but saw the visitor to the door without comment. After her brother had gone Aurelia followed her son into his study.
“Do sit, Mater,” he said to her gently.
She sat, but on the edge of the chair. “I don’t like it,” she said. “Why should he want to see you in person?’’
“You heard Uncle Gaius. He’s starting to reform the religious orders, “and he wants to see me as flamen Dialis.’’
“I do not believe that,” said Aurelia stubbornly.
Worried, Caesar put his chin on his right hand and looked at his mother searchingly. His concern was not for himself; he could cope with whatever was to come, he knew that. No, it was for her, and for all the other women of his family.
The tragedy had marched on inexorably from the time of the conference Young Marius had called to discuss his seeking the consulship, through the season of artificially induced joy and confidence, through the downslide of the terrible winter, to the yawning pit which had been the defeat at Sacriportus. Of Young Marius they had seen practically nothing once he had become consul, and that included his mother and his wife. A mistress had come on the scene, a beautiful Roman woman of knightly forebears named Praecia, and she monopolized every spare moment Young Marius could find. Rich enough to be financially independent, she was at the time she caught Young Marius in her toils already thirty-seven years old, and not of a mind for marriage. There had been a marriage in her eighteenth year, but only to obey her father, who had died shortly thereafter; Praecia had promptly embarked upon a series of lovers, and her husband had divorced her. Which suited her very well. She settled to the kind of life she most liked, mistress of her own establishment as well as mistress
to some interesting nobleman who brought his friends, his problems and his political intrigues to her dining couch and bed, and thus enabled her to combine politics with passion—an irresistible combination to one of Praecia’s leanings.
Young Marius had been her biggest fish and she had grown quite fond of him, amused at his youthful posturings, fascinated by the power inherent in the name Gaius Marius, and pleased at the fact that the young senior consul preferred her to his mother, a Julia, and his wife, a Mucia. So she had thrown her large and tastefully decorated house open to all Young Marius’s friends, and her bed to a small, select group who formed Young Marius’s inner circle. Once Carbo (whom she loathed) had left for Ariminum, she became her paramour’s chief adviser in all things, and fancied that it was she, not Young Marius, who actually ran Rome.
So when the news came that Sulla was about to depart from Teanum Sidicinum, and Young Marius announced that it was more than time he left to join his troops at Ad Pictas, Praecia had toyed with the idea of becoming a camp follower, accompanying the young senior consul to the war. It had not come to pass; Young Marius found a typical solution to the problem she was becoming by leaving Rome after dark without telling her he was going. However, not to repine! Praecia shrugged, and looked about for other game.
All this had meant that neither his mother nor his wife had been given the opportunity to bid him farewell, to wish him the luck he would certainly need. He was gone. And he was never to come back. The news of Sacriportus had not spread through Rome before Brutus Damasippus (too much Carbo’s man to esteem Praecia) had embarked upon his bloodbath. Among those who died was Quintus Mucius Scaevola Pontifex Maximus, the father of Young Marius’s wife, and a good friend to Young Marius’s mother.
“My son did this,” Julia had said to Aurelia when she came to see if there was anything she could do.
“Nonsense!” Aurelia had answered warmly. “It was Brutus Damasippus, no one else.”
“I have seen the letter my son sent in his own writing from Sacriportus,” Julia had said, drawing in her breath on something far worse than a sob. “He couldn’t accept defeat without this paltry retaliation, and how can I expect my daughter-in-law to speak to me again?”
Caesar had huddled himself in a far corner of the room and watched the faces of the women with stony concentration. How could her son have done this to Aunt Julia? Especially after what his mad old father had done at the end? She was caught inside a mass of sorrow like a fly in a chunk of amber, her beauty the greater because she was static, her pain all within and quite invisible. It didn’t even show in her eyes.
Then Mucia came in; Julia shrank away, averted her gaze.
Aurelia had sat bolt upright, the planes of her face sharp and flinty. “Mucia Tertia, do you blame Julia for your father’s murder?” she demanded.
“Of course not,” said Young Marius’s wife, and pulled a chair over so that she could sit close enough to Julia to take her hands. “Please, Julia, look at me!”
“I cannot!”
“You must! I do not intend to move back to my father’s house and live with my stepmother. Nor do I intend to seek a place in my own mother’s house, with those frightful boys of hers. I want to stay here with my dear kind mother-in-law.”
So that had been all right. Some kind of life had gone on for Julia and Mucia Tertia, though they heard nothing from Young Marius walled up in Praeneste, and the news from various battlefields was always in Sulla’s favor. Had he been Aurelia’s son, reflected Aurelia’s son, Young Marius would have drawn little comfort from dwelling upon his mother while the days in Praeneste dragged on interminably. Aurelia was not as soft, not as loving, not as forgiving as Julia—but then, decided Caesar with a smile, if she had been, he might have turned out more like Young Marius! Caesar owned his mother’s detachment. And her hardness too.
Bad news piled on top of bad news: Carbo had stolen away in the night; Sulla had turned the Samnites back; Pompey and Crassus had defeated the men Carbo had deserted in Clusium; the Piglet and Varro Lucullus were in control of Italian Gaul; Sulla had entered Rome for a period of hours only to set up a provisional government—and left Torquatus behind with Thracian cavalry to ensure his provisional government remained a functioning government.
But Sulla had not come to visit Aurelia, which fascinated her son sufficiently to try a little fishing. Of that meeting his mother had found thrust upon her outside Teanum Sidicinum she had said just about nothing; now here she was with her calm unimpaired and a tradition broken.
“He ought to have come to see you!” Caesar had said.
“He will never come to see me again,” said Aurelia.
“Why not?”
“Those visits belong to a different time.”
“A time when he was handsome enough to fancy?” the son snapped, that rigidly suppressed temper suddenly flashing out.
But she froze, gave him a look which crushed him. “You are stupid as well as insulting! Leave me!” she said.
He left her. And left the subject severely alone thereafter. Whatever Sulla meant to her was her business.
They had heard of the siege tower Young Marius built and of its miserable end, of the other attempts he made to break through Ofella’s wall. And then on the last day of October there came the shocking news that ninety thousand Samnites were sitting in Pompey Strabo’s camp outside the Colline Gate.
The next two days were the worst of Caesar’s life. Choking inside his priestly garb, unable to touch a sword or look on death at the moment it happened, he locked himself in his study and commenced work on a new epic poem—in Latin, not in Greek—choosing the dactylic hexameter to make his task more difficult. The noise of battle came clearly to his ears, but he shut it out and struggled on with his maddening spondees and empty phrases, aching to be there and in it, admitting that he would not have cared which side he fought on, as long as he fought….
And after the sounds died away during the night he came charging out of his study to find his mother in her office bent over her accounts, and stood in her doorway convulsed with rage.
“How can I write what I cannot do?” he demanded. “What is the greatest literature about, if not war and warriors? Did Homer waste his time on flowery claptrap? Did Thucydides deem the art of beekeeping a suitable subject for his pen?”
She knew exactly how to deflate him, so she said in cool ledgerish tones, “Probably not,” and returned to her work.
And that night was the end of peace. Julia’s son was dead—all of them were dead, and Rome belonged to Sulla. Who did not come to see them, or send any message.
That the Senate and the Centuriate Assembly had voted him the position of Dictator everyone knew, and talked about endlessly. But it was Lucius Decumius who told Caesar and young Gaius Matius from the other ground—floor apartment about the mystery of the disappearing knights.
“All men who got rich under Marius or Cinna or Carbo, and that be no accident. You’re lucky your tata has been dead for enough years, Pimple,” Lucius Decumius said to Gaius Matius, who had borne the unflattering nickname of Pustula—Pimple—since he had been a toddler. “And your tata too, probably, young Peacock,” he said to Caesar.
“What do you mean?” asked Matius, frowning.
“I means there’s some awful discreet-looking fellows walking round Rome pinching rich knights,” the caretaker of the crossroads college said. “Freedmen mostly, but not your average gossipy Greek with boyfriend troubles. They’re all called Lucius Cornelius something—or—other. My Brethren and I, we calls them the Sullani. Because they belongs to him. Mark my words, young Peacock and Pimple, they do not bode no good! And I safely predicts that they are going to pinch a lot more rich knights.”
“Sulla can’t do that!” said Matius, lips compressed.
“Sulla can do anything he likes,” said Caesar. “He’s been made Dictator. That’s better than being King. His edicts have the force of law, he’s not tied to the lex Caecilia Didia of seventeen days betwee
n promulgation and ratification, he doesn’t even have to discuss his laws in Senate or Assemblies. And he cannot be made to answer for a single thing he does—or for anything he’s done in the past, for that matter. Mind you,” he added thoughtfully, “I think that if Rome isn’t taken into a very strong hand, she’s finished. So I hope all goes well for him. And I hope he has the vision and the courage to do what must be done.”
“That man,” said Lucius Decumius, “has the gall to do anything! Anything at all.”
Living as they did in the heart of the Subura—which was the poorest and the most polyglot district in Rome—they found that Sulla’s proscriptions had not the profound effect on life that they did in places like the Carinae, the Palatine, the upper Quirinal and Viminal. Though there were knights of the First Class aplenty between the far poorer Suburanites, few of them held a status above tribunus aerarius, and few the kind of political contacts which imperiled their lives now that Sulla was in power.
When the first list had displayed Young Marius’s name second from the top, Julia and Mucia Tertia had come to see Aurelia; as these visits were usually the other way around, their advent was a surprise. So was news of the list, which had not yet spread as far as the Subura; Sulla had not kept Julia waiting for her fate.
“I have had a notice served on me by the urban praetor—elect, the younger Dolabella.” Julia shivered. “Not a pleasant man! My poor son’s estate is confiscate. Nothing can be saved.”
“Your house too?’’ Aurelia asked, white—faced.
“Everything. He had a list of everything. All the mining interests in Spain, the lands in Etruria, our villa at Cumae, the house here in Rome, other lands Gaius Marius had acquired in Lucania and Umbria, the wheat latifundia on the Bagradas River in Africa Province, the dye works for wool in Hierapolis, the glassworks in Sidon. Even the farm in Arpinum. It all belongs now to Rome and will, I was informed, be put up for auction.”
“Oh, Julia!”
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