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

by Colleen McCullough

  “Spare him, Lucius Cornelius!” she cried. “Spare him!”

  “Spare him!” whispered Fabia.

  “Spare him!” shouted Licinia.

  Whereupon the seventeen-year-old Julia Strabo upstaged everyone by bursting into tears.

  “For Rome, Lucius Cornelius! Spare him for Rome!” thundered Gaius Cotta in the stentorian voice his father had made famous. “We beg you, spare him!”

  “For Rome, Lucius Cornelius!” shouted Marcus Cotta.

  “For Rome, Lucius Cornelius!” blared Lucius Cotta.

  Which left Mamercus, who produced a bleat. “Spare him!”

  Silence. Each side gazed at the other.

  Sulla sat straight in his chair, right foot forward and left foot back in the classical pose of the Roman great. His chin was tucked in, his brow beetled. He waited. Then: “No!”

  So it began all over again.

  And again he said: “No!”

  Feeling as limp and wrung out as a piece of washing—but actually improving in leaps and bounds—Aurelia pleaded for the life of her son a third time with heartbroken voice and trembling hands. Julia Strabo was howling lustily, Licinia looked as if she might join in. The beseeching chorus swelled, and died away with a third bleat from Mamercus.

  Silence fell. Sulla waited and waited, apparently having adopted what he thought was a Zeus—like aspect, thunderous, regal, portentous. Finally he got to his feet and stepped to the edge of his small Tyrian purple podium, where he stood with immense dignity, frowning direfully.

  Then he sighed a sigh which could easily have been heard in the back row of the cavea, clenched his fists and raised them toward the gilded ceiling’s splendiferous stars. “Very well, have it your own way!” he cried. “I will spare him! But be warned! In this young man I see many Mariuses!”

  After which he bounced like a baby goat from his perch to the floor, and skipped gleefully along the side of the pool. “Oh, I needed that! Wonderful, wonderful! I haven’t had so much fun since I slept between my stepmother and my mistress! Being the Dictator is no kind of life! I don’t even have time to go to the play! But this was better than any play I’ve ever seen, and I was in the lead! You all did very well. Except for you, Mamercus, spoiling things in your praetexta and emitting those peculiar sounds. You’re stiff, man, too stiff! You must try to get into the part!”

  Reaching Aurelia, he helped her down from her (solid) gold stool and hugged her over and over again. “Splendid, splendid! You looked like Iphigenia at Aulis, my dear.”

  “I felt like the fishwife in a mime.”

  He had forgotten the lictors, who still stood to either side of the empty crocodile throne with wooden faces; nothing about this job would ever surprise them again!

  “Come on, let’s go to the dining room and have a party!” the Dictator said, shooing everybody in the chorus before him, one arm about the terrified Julia Strabo. “Don’t cry, silly girl, it’s all right! This was just my little joke,” he said, rolled his eyes at Mamercus and gave Julia Strabo a push between her shoulder blades. “Here, Mamercus, find your handkerchief and clean her up.” The arm went round Aurelia. “Magnificent! Truly magnificent! You should always wear pink, you know.”

  So relieved her knees were shaking, Aurelia put on a fierce frown and said, her voice in her boots, ‘“In him I see many Mariuses!’ You ought to have said, ‘In him I see many Sullas!’ It would have been closer to the point. He’s not at all like Marius, but sometimes he’s awfully like you.”

  Dalmatica and Cornelia Sulla were waiting outside, utterly bewildered; when the lictors went in they hadn’t been very surprised, but then they had seen the small podium go in, and the Tyrian purple cloth, and the Egyptian chair, and finally the gold stool. Now everyone was spilling out laughing—why was Julia Strabo crying?—and Sulla had his arm around Aurelia, who was smiling as if she would never stop.

  “A party!” shouted Sulla, pranced over to his wife, took her face between his hands and kissed her. “We’re going to have a party, and I am going to get very, very drunk!”

  It was some time later before Aurelia realized that not one of the players in that incredible scene had found anything demeaning in Sulla’s impromptu drama, nor made the mistake of deeming Sulla a lesser man because he had staged it. If anything, its effect had been the opposite; how could one not fear a man who didn’t care about appearances?

  No one who participated ever recounted the story, made capital out of it and Sulla at dinner parties, or tittle—tattled it over sweet watered wine and little cakes. Not from fear of their lives. Mostly because no one thought Rome would ever, ever believe it.

  *

  When Caesar arrived home he experienced the end results of his mother’s one—act play at once; Sulla sent his own doctor, Lucius Tuccius, to see the patient.

  “Frankly, I don’t consider Sulla much of a recommendation,” Aurelia said to Lucius Decumius, “so I can only hope that without Lucius Tuccius, Sulla would be a lot worse.”

  “He’s a Roman,” said Lucius Decumius, “and that’s something. I don’t trust them Greeks.” ,

  “Greek physicians are very clever.”

  “In a theory—etical way. They treats their patients with new ideas, not old standbys. Old standbys are the best. I’ll take pounded grey spiders and powdered dormice any day!”

  “Well, Lucius Decumius, as you say, this one is a Roman.”

  As Sulla’s doctor emerged at that moment from the direction of Caesar’s room, conversation ceased. Tuccius was a small man, very round and smooth and clean-looking; he had been Sulla’s chief army surgeon, and it had been he who sent Sulla to Aedepsus when Sulla had become so ill in Greece.

  “I think the wisewoman of Nersae was right, and your son suffered the ague without a pattern,” he said cheerfully. “He’s lucky. Few men recover from it.”

  “Then he will recover?” asked Aurelia anxiously.

  “Oh, yes. The crisis has long passed. But the disease has left his blood enervated. That’s why he has no color, and why he is so weak.”

  “So what does we do?” demanded Lucius Decumius pugnaciously.

  “Well, men who have lost a lot of blood from a wound show much the same symptoms as Caesar,” said Tuccius, unconcerned. “In such cases, if they didn’t die they gradually got better of their own accord. But I always found it a help to feed them the liver of a sheep once a day. The younger the sheep, the quicker the recovery. I recommend that Caesar eat the liver of a lamb and drink three hen’s eggs beaten into goat’s milk every day.”

  “What, no medicine?” asked Lucius Decumius suspiciously.

  “Medicine won’t cure Caesar’s ailment. Like the Greek physicians of Aedepsus, I believe in diet over medicine in most situations,” said Lucius Tuccius firmly.

  “See? He’s a Greek after all!” said Lucius Decumius after the doctor had departed.

  “Never mind that,” said Aurelia briskly. “I shall adhere to his recommendations for at least a market interval. Then we shall see. But it seems sensible advice to me.”

  “I’d better start for the Campus Lanatarius,” said the little man who loved Caesar more than he did his sons. “I’ll buy the lamb and see it slaughtered on the spot.”

  The real hitch turned out to be the patient, who flatly refused to eat the lamb’s liver, and drank his first mixture of egg—and—goat’s—milk with such loathing that he brought it up.

  The staff held a conference with Aurelia.

  “Must the liver be raw?’’ asked Murgus the cook.

  Aurelia blinked. “I don’t know. I just assumed it.”

  “Then could we send to Lucius Tuccius and ask?” from the steward, Eutychus. “Caesar is not an eater—by that I mean that the sheer taste of food does not send him into ecstasies. He is conservative but not fussy. However, one of the things I have always noticed is that he will not eat things with a strong smell of their own. Like eggs. As for that raw liver—pew! It stinks!”

  “Let me c
ook the liver and put plenty of sweet wine in the egg—and—milk,” pleaded Murgus.

  “How would you cook the liver?” Aurelia asked.

  “I’d slice it thin, roll each slice in a little salt and spelt, and fry it lightly on a very hot fire.”

  “All right, Murgus, I’ll send to Lucius Tuccius and describe what you want to do,” said the patient’s mother.

  Back came the message: “Put what you like in the egg—and—milk, and of course cook the liver!”

  After that the patient tolerated his regimen, though not with any degree of affection.

  “Say what you like about the food, Caesar, I think it is working was his mother’s verdict.

  “I know it’s working! Why else do you think I’m eating the stuff?” was the patient’s disgruntled response.

  Light broke; Aurelia sat down beside Caesar’s couch with a look on her face that said she was going to stay there until she got some answers. “All right, what’s the real matter?”

  Lips pressed together, he stared out the open window of the reception room into the garden Gaius Matius had made in the bottom of the light well. “I have made the most wretched business out of my first venture on my own,” he said at last. “While everybody else behaved with amazing courage and daring, I lay like a log with nothing to say and no part in the action. The hero was Burgundus, and the heroines you and Ria, Mater.”

  She hid her smile. “Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned, Caesar. Perhaps the Great God—whose servant you still are!—felt you had to be taught a lesson you’ve never been willing to learn—that a man cannot fight the gods, and that the Greeks were right about hubris. A man with hubris is an abomination.”

  “Am I really so proud you think I own hubris?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes. You have plenty of false pride.”

  “I see absolutely no relevance between hubris and what happened at Nersae,” said Caesar stubbornly.

  “It’s what the Greeks would call hypothetical.”

  “I think you mean philosophical.”

  Since there was nothing wrong with her education, she did not acknowledge this quibble, simply swept on. “The fact that you own an overweening degree of pride is a grave temptation to the gods. Hubris presumes to direct the gods and says that a man is above the status of men. And—as we Romans know!—the gods do not choose to show a man he is above himself with what I might call a personal intervention. Jupiter Optimus Maximus doesn’t speak to men with a human voice, and I am never convinced that the Jupiter Optimus Maximus who appears to men in dreams is anything more than a figment of dreams. The gods intervene in a natural way, they punish with natural things. You were punished with a natural thing—you became ill. And I believe that the seriousness of your illness is a direct indication of the degree of your pride. It almost killed you!”

  “You impute a divine vector,” he said, “for a disgustingly animal event. I believe the vector was as mundanely animal as the event. And neither of us can prove our contention, so what does it matter? What matters is that I failed in my first attempt to govern my life. I was a passive object surrounded by heroism, none of which was mine.”

  “Oh, Caesar, will you never learn?”

  The beautiful smile came. “Probably not, Mater.”

  “Sulla wants to see you.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as you’re well enough, I am to send to him for an appointment.”

  “Tomorrow, then.”

  “No, after the next nundinae.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Aurelia sighed. “Tomorrow.”

  He insisted upon walking without an attendant, and when he discovered Lucius Decumius lurking some paces behind him, sent his watchdog home with a firmness Lucius Decumius dared not defy. “I am tired of being cosseted and clucked over!” he said in the voice which frightened people. “Leave me alone!”

  The walk was demanding, but he arrived at Sulla’s house far from exhausted; now definitely on the mend, he was mending rapidly.

  “I see you’re in a toga,” said Sulla, who was sitting behind his desk. He indicated the laena and apex disposed neatly on a nearby couch. “I’ve saved them for you. Don’t you have spares?”

  “Not a second apex, anyway. That one was a gift from my wonderful benefactor, Gaius Marius.”

  “Didn’t Merula’s fit?”

  “I have an enormous head,” said Caesar, straight—faced.

  Sulla chuckled. “I believe you!” He had sent to Aurelia to ask if Caesar knew of the second part of the prophecy, and having received a negative answer, had decided Caesar wouldn’t hear it from him. But he fully intended to discuss Marius. His thinking had swung completely around, thanks to two factors. The first was Aurelia’s information about the circumstances behind Caesar’s being dowered with the flaminate Dialis, and the second was his one—act play, which he had enjoyed (and the party which had followed) with huge gusto; it had refreshed him so thoroughly that though it was now a month in the past, he still found himself remembering bits and pieces at the most inappropriate moments, and had been able to apply himself to his laws with renewed energy.

  Yes, the moment that magnificent-looking delegation had walked into his atrium so solemnly and theatrically he had been lifted out of himself—out of his dreary appalling shell, out of a life devoid of enjoyment and lightness. For a short space of time reality had utterly vanished and he had immersed himself inside a sparkling and gorgeous pageant. And since that day he had found hope again; he knew it would end. He knew he would be released to do what he longed to do, bury himself and his hideousness in a world of hilarity, glamor, idleness, artificiality, entertainments, grotesques and travesties. He would get through the present grind into a very different and infinitely more desirable future.

  “You made a thousand mistakes when you fled, Caesar,” said Sulla in a rather friendly way.

  “I don’t need to be told. I’m well aware of it.”

  “You’re far too pretty to disappear into the furniture, and you have a natural sense of the dramatic,” Sulla explained, ticking his points off on his fingers. “The German, the horse, your pretty face, your natural arrogance—need I go on?”

  “No,” said Caesar, looking rueful. “I’ve already heard it all from my mother—and several other people.”

  “Good. However, I’d be willing to bet they didn’t give you the advice I intend to. Which is, Caesar, to accept your fate. If you are outstanding—if you can’t blend into the background—then don’t hare off on wild excursions which demand you can. Unless, as I once did, you have a chance to masquerade as a rather terrific-looking Gaul. I came back wearing a torc around my neck, and I thought the thing was my luck. But Gaius Marius was right. The thing was noticeable in a way I didn’t want to be noticed. So I gave up wearing it. I was a Roman, not a Gaul—and Fortune favored me, not an inanimate hunk of gold, no matter how lovely. Wherever you go, you will be noticed. Just like me. So learn to work within the confines of your nature and your appearance.” Sulla grunted, looked a little astonished. “How well-meaning I am! I hardly ever give well-meaning advice.”

  “I am grateful for it,” said Caesar sincerely.

  The Dictator brushed this aside. “I want to know why you think Gaius Marius made you the flamen Dialis.’’

  Caesar paused to choose his words, understanding that his answer must be logical and unemotional.

  “Gaius Marius saw a lot of me during the months after he had his second stroke,” he began.

  Sulla interrupted. “How old were you?”

  “Ten when it started. Almost twelve when it finished.”

  “Go on.”

  “I was interested in what he had to say about soldiering. I listened very intently. He taught me to ride, use a sword, throw a spear, swim.” Caesar smiled wryly. “I used to have gigantic military ambitions in those days.”

  “So you listened very intently.”

  “Yes, indeed. And I think that Gaius Marius gained the impr
ession that I wanted to surpass him.”

  “Why should he?”

  Another rueful look. “I told him I did!”

  “All right, now to the flaminate. Expound.”

  “I can’t give you a logical answer to that, I really can’t. Except that I believe he made me flamen Dialis to prevent my having a military or a political career,” said Caesar, very uncomfortably. “That answer isn’t all founded in my conceit. Gaius Marius was sick in his mind. He may have imagined it.”

  “Well,” said Sulla, face inscrutable, “since he’s dead, we’ll never know the real answer, will we? However, given that his mind was diseased, your theory fits his character. He was always afraid of being outshone by men who had the birthright. Old and great names. His own name was a new one, and he felt he had been unfairly discriminated against because he was a New Man. Take, for example, my capture of King Jugurtha. He grabbed all the credit for that, you know! My work, my skill! If I had not captured Jugurtha, the war in Africa could never have been ended so expeditiously and finally. Your father’s cousin, Catulus Caesar, tried to give me the credit in his memoirs, but he was howled down.”

  Not if his life depended upon it would Caesar have betrayed by word or look what he thought of this astonishing version of the capture of King Jugurtha. Sulla had been Marius’s legate! No matter how brilliant the actual capture had been, the credit had to go to Marius! It was Marius had sent Sulla off on the mission, and Marius who was the commander of the war. And the general couldn’t do everything himself—that was why he had legates in the first place. I think, thought Caesar, that I am hearing one of the early versions of what will become the official story! Marius has lost, Sulla has won. For only one reason. Because Sulla has outlived Marius.

  “I see,” said Caesar, and left it at that.

  Scuffling a little, Sulla got out of his chair and walked across to the couch where the garb of the flamen Dialis lay. He picked up the ivory helmet with its spike and disc of wool, and tossed it between his hands. “You’ve lined it well,” he said.