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

by Colleen McCullough

  It was not until he entered the temple of Jupiter Stator, in which his feast was laid out, that he fully understood how funny the men who mattered thought his elephantine fiasco was. The ordeal had actually begun on his way down from the Capitol after the triumph itself had concluded, when he found a group of people clustered about the base of Scipio Africanus’s encolumned statue, laughing hilariously. The moment he drew near, however, everyone cleared a path to make sure he saw what some Forum wit had chalked upon the plinth in huge letters:

  “Africanus up here in the air

  Found elephants worthy of prayer.

  Kid Butcher, precocious young shit,

  Found elephants just wouldn’t fit!”

  Inside Jupiter Stator it was even worse. Some of his guests contented themselves by putting a heavy emphasis on the word “Magnus” when they addressed him by it, but others feigned a slip in pronunciation which turned him into “Magus”—a ludicrous wise man from Persia—or punned deliciously on “Manus”—hand—to imply everything from his being on hand to smarm to Sulla, to smarming to Sulla by using his hand. A very few remained courteous, like Metellus Pius and Varro Lucullus; a few were Pompey’s own friends and relatives, who made matters worse by waxing indignant and offering to fight the mockers; and some, like Catulus and Hortensius, were conspicuous by their absence.

  Pompey did make a new friend, however; none other than the Dictator’s long—lost nephew, Publius Cornelius Sulla, who was introduced to him by Catilina.

  “I didn’t realize Sulla had a nephew!” said Pompey.

  “Nor did he,” said Publius Sulla cheerfully, and added, “Nor did I until recently, for that matter.”

  Catilina began to laugh. “It’s no less than the truth,” he said to Pompey, now obviously confused.

  “You’d better enlighten me,” said Pompey, glad to hear a shout of laughter that was not directed at him.

  “I grew up thinking I was the son of Sextus Perquitienus,” Publius Sulla explained. “Lived next door to Gaius Marius all my life! When my grandfather died and my father inherited, neither of us suspected the truth. But my father was friendly with Cinna, so after the proscription lists started going up on the rostra, he expected to see his name at the top of every new one that came out. And worried so much that he fell over dead.”

  This was announced with such careless insouciance that Pompey correctly assumed there was no love lost between father and son—not a surprise, considering that old Sextus Perquitienus (and Publius Sulla’s father) had been detested by most of Rome.

  “I’m fascinated,” Pompey said.

  “I found out who I was when I was going through a chest of old documents belonging to my grandfather,” said Publius Sulla. “I unearthed the adoption papers! Turned out my father had been adopted by my grandfather before my uncle the Dictator was born—he never knew he had an older brother. Anyway, I thought I had better take the papers to Uncle Lucius the Dictator before someone put my name on a proscription list!”

  “Well, you do have a look of Sulla about you,” Pompey said, smiling, “so I suppose you didn’t have much trouble convincing him.”

  “No trouble at all! Isn’t it the most wonderful luck?” asked Publius Sulla happily. “Now I have all the Perquitienus wealth, I’m safe from proscription, and I’ll probably inherit a share of Uncle Lucius the Dictator’s millions as well.”

  “Do you think he’ll groom you as some kind of successor?”

  A question which sent Publius Sulla into slightly wine—soaked giggles. “I? Succeed Sulla? Ye gods, no! I, my dear Magnus, have no political ambitions whatsoever!”

  “Are you in the Senate already?”

  Catilina stepped into the breach. “We’re both summoned by Sulla to attend meetings of the Senate, though he hasn’t made us senators officially—yet. Publius Sulla and I just had a feeling you might need some young and friendly faces here today, so we came along to sample the eats and cheer you up.”

  “I’m very glad you did come,” said Pompey gratefully.

  “Don’t let these haughty sticklers for the mos maiorum grind you down,” said Catilina, clapping Pompey on the back. “Some of us were really delighted to see a young man triumph. You’ll be in the Senate very soon, I can promise you that. Sulla intends to fill it with men whom the haughty sticklers do not approve of!”

  And suddenly Pompey saw red. “As far as I’m concerned,” he said through his teeth, “the Senate can disappear up its own fundamental orifice! I know what I intend to do with my life, and it does not include membership in the Senate! Before I’m done with that body—or enter it!—I mean to prove to it that it can’t keep an outstanding man from any office or command he might decide he wants—as a knight, not a senator!”

  One of Catilina’s darkly slender eyebrows flew up, though Publius Sulla seemingly missed the significance of this remark.

  Pompey gazed around the room, then beamed, his flash of temper gone. “Ah! There he is! All alone on his couch too! Do come and eat with me and my brother-in-law Memmius! He’s the best of good fellows!”

  “You should be eating with all the haughty sticklers who unbent enough to come today,” said Catilina. “We’ll quite understand, you know, if you join Metellus Pius and his friends. You leave us with Gaius Memmius and we’ll be as happy as two elderly Peripatetics arguing about the function of a man’s navel.”

  “This is my triumphal feast, and I can eat with whomsoever I like,” said Pompey.

  *

  At the beginning of April, Sulla published a list of two hundred new senators, promising that there would be more in the months to come. The name at the top was that of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, who went to see Sulla immediately.

  “I will not enter the Senate!” he said angrily.

  Sulla gazed at his visitor, astonished. “Why? I would have thought you’d be breaking your neck to get in!”

  The anger fled; self-preservation came to the fore as Pompey realized how Sulla would see this extraordinary departure from what Sulla thought of as Pompey’s normal self; after all, he had been at some pains to build a certain image for Sulla. Cool, Magnus! Cool down and think this thing out. Find a reason Sulla will believe because it fits his idea of me. No! No! Give him a reason that fits his idea of himself!

  “It’s all to do,” said the young man, gazing at Sulla in wide-eyed earnestness, “with the lesson you taught me over that wretched triumph.” He drew a breath. “I’ve had a good think since then, Lucius Cornelius. And I realize I’m too young, not educated enough. Please, Lucius Cornelius, let me find my own way into the Senate in my own good time. If I go in now, I’ll be laughed at for years.” And that, thought Pompey, is very true! I’m not joining a body of men who will all smirk every time they set eyes on me. I’ll join that body of men when their knees shake every time they set eyes on me.

  Mollified, Sulla shrugged. “Have it your own way, Magnus.”

  “Thank you, I really would prefer to. I’ll wait until I’ve done something they’ll remember over elephants. Like a decent and conscientious quaestorship when I’m thirty.”

  That was a little too much; the pale eyes were now frankly amused, as if the mind behind them was reaching deeper into Pompey than Pompey wanted. But all Sulla said was, “A very good idea! I’ll remove your name before I take my list to the Popular Assembly for ratification—I am going to have all my major laws ratified by the People, and I’ll start with this one. But I want you in the House tomorrow just the same. It’s fitting that all my legates of the war should hear the beginning. So make sure you’re there.”

  Pompey was there.

  “I will begin,” said the Dictator in a strong voice, “by discussing Italy and the Italians. In accordance with my promises to the Italian leaders, I will see that every last Italian entitled is enrolled as a citizen of Rome in the proper way, with an equal distribution across the full spectrum of the thirty-five tribes. There can be no more attempts to cheat the Italian people of full suffrage by
burying their votes in only a few selected tribes. I gave my word on the matter, and I will honor my word.”

  Sitting side by side on the middle tier, Hortensius and Catulus exchanged a significant glance; neither was a man who favored this massive concession to people who were not, when it was all boiled down, a Roman’s bootlace.

  Sulla shifted a little on his curule chair. “Regretfully, I find it impossible to honor my promise to distribute Rome’s freedmen across the thirty-five tribes. They will have to remain enrolled in urban Esquilina or Suburana. I do this for one specific reason: to ensure that a man who owns thousands of slaves will not at any time in the future be tempted to free large numbers of them and thus overload his own rural tribe with freedman clients.”

  “Clever old Sulla!” said Catulus to Hortensius.

  “Not much escapes him,” said Hortensius under his breath. “It sounds as if he’s heard that Marcus Crassus is going heavily into slaves, doesn’t it?”

  Sulla went on to discuss towns and lands. “Brundisium, a city which treated me and my men with the honor we deserved, will be rewarded by becoming exempt from all customs and excise duties.”

  “Phew!”’ said Catulus. “That little decree will make Brundisium the most popular port in Italy!”

  The Dictator rewarded some districts but punished many more, though in varying degree; Praeneste suffered perhaps worst, though the lesser Sulmo was ordered razed to the ground, and Capua went back to its old status as well as losing every last iugerum of its lands to swell the Roman ager publicus.

  Catulus only half—listened after Sulla began to drone an endless list of town names, to find himself rudely jerked back to the present by Hortensius’s elbow in his ribs. “Quintus, he’s talking about you!” said Hortensius.

  “... Quintus Lutatius Catulus, my loyal follower, I hereby give the task of rebuilding the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitol.” The puckered lips drew back to display gum, and a derisive, spiteful gleam flickered in Sulla’s eyes. “Most of the funds will come out of income generated from our new Roman ager publicus, but I also expect you, my dear Quintus Lutatius, to supplement this source from the depths of your private purse.”

  Jaw dropping, Catulus sat filled with an icy fear, for he understood that this was Sulla’s way of punishing him for staying safely in Rome under Cinna and Carbo all those years.

  “Our Pontifex Maximus, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius, is to restore the temple of Ops damaged in the same fire,” Sulla went on smoothly. “However, this project must be entirely funded from the public purse, as Ops is the manifestation of Rome’s public wealth. However, I do require that our Pontifex Maximus shall rededicate that temple himself when the work is finished.”

  “That ought to be stammering good fun!” said Hortensius.

  “I have just published a list containing the names of two hundred men I have elevated to the Senate,” Sulla continued, “though Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus has informed me that he does not wish to join the Senate at this time. His name has been deleted.”

  That caused sufficient sensation to stir the whole House; all eyes turned to Pompey, who sat alone near the doors looking very comfortable with himself, and smiling demurely.

  “I intend to add a further hundred or so men to the Senate in the future, which will bring total membership up to about four hundred, so many senators have we lost over the past decade.”

  “You wouldn’t think he’d killed any of them, would you?” asked Catulus of Hortensius with a snap. How could he possibly find the huge sums he suspected would be required of his private purse in order to rebuild the Great Temple?

  The Dictator proceeded. “I have tried to find my new members of the Senate from among senatorial families, though I have included knights of hitherto unsenatorial family, provided their bloodlines do the Senate honor. You will find no mushrooms growing on my list! However, in relation to one kind of new senator, I pass over all qualifications, from the completely unofficial census of one million sesterces to a suitable family background. I am referring to soldiers of exceptional valor. I intend that Rome should honor all such men as she did in the days of Marcus Fabius Buteo. Of recent generations we have entirely ignored the military hero. Well, I will see an end to that! If any man should win a Grass Crown or a Civic Crown, no matter who or what his antecedents, he will automatically enter the Senate. In this way, the little new blood I have permitted the Senate will at least be brave blood! And I would hope that there will be fine old names among the winners of our major crowns: it should not be left to newcomers to earn accolades as our bravest men!”

  Hortensius grunted. “That’s a fairly popular edict.”

  But Catulus could get no further than the financial burden Sulla had laid upon him, and merely rolled a pair of piteous eyes at his brother-in-law.

  “One further thing, and I will dismiss this assemblage,” Sulla said. “Each man on my list of new senators will be presented to the Assembly of the People, patrician as well as plebeian, and I will require of that body that he be voted in.” He got to his feet. “The meeting is now concluded.”

  “How am I going to find enough money?” wailed Catulus to Hortensius as they hurried out of the Curia Hostilia.

  “Don’t find it,” said Hortensius coolly.

  “I’ll have to!”

  “He’s going to die, Quintus. Until he does, you’ll have to adopt delaying tactics. After he dies, who cares? Let the State find every sestertius of the money.”

  “It’s all due to the flamen Dialis!” said Catulus savagely. “He caused the fire—let him pay for the new Great Temple!”

  The fine legal mind of Hortensius found issue with this; its owner frowned. “You’d better not be heard saying that! The flamen Dialis cannot be held responsible for a mischance phenomenon unless he has been charged and tried in a court of law, as with any other priest. Sulla hasn’t explained why the young fellow has apparently fled from Rome, but he hasn’t proscribed him. Nor has a charge been laid against him.”

  “He’s Sulla’s nephew by marriage!”

  “Exactly, my dear Quintus.”

  “Oh, brother-in-law, why do we bother with all this? There are times when I long to gather up all my money, sell my estates, and move to Cyrenaica,” said Catulus.

  “We bother because we have the birthright,” said Hortensius.

  *

  New senators and old gathered two days later to hear Sulla announce that he intended to abolish the election of censors, at least for the time being; the way he would reorganize the State’s finances, he explained, would make it unnecessary to call for contracts, and no census of the people would be of value for at least another decade.

  “At that point you may re-examine the matter of censors,” said the Dictator grandly. “I do not presume to legislate the censors completely out of existence.”

  He would, however, do something special for the men of his own order, the Patriciate. “Over the centuries which have passed since the original plebeian revolt,” he said, “patrician rank has come to mean very little. The only advantage a patrician possesses over a plebeian these days is that he can assume certain religious offices barred to plebeians. I do not consider this worthy of the mos maiorum. A man born a patrician goes back to before the Kings in a clean, clear line. The mere fact that he exists shows that his family has served Rome for more than half a millennium. I think it fair in light of this that the patrician must enjoy some special honor—minor perhaps, but exclusive to him. I am therefore going to allow the patrician to stand for curule office—both praetor and consul—two years ahead of the plebeian.”

  “What he means, of course, is that he’s looking after his own,” said the plebeian Marcus Junius Brutus to his wife Servilia, a patrician.

  Servilia had found her husband slightly more communicative in these peril—fraught days. Ever since the news came that her father-in-law had died off Lilybaeum as a result of the Dictator’s house pet Pompey’s cleaning—up operations, B
rutus had lived on a hairline. Would his father be proscribed? Would he be proscribed? As the son of a proscribed man he could inherit nothing, would lose everything; and if he himself were proscribed, he would lose his life. But Old Brutus’s name had not been among the forty proscribed senators, and no more senatorial names had been published since that first list. Brutus hoped the danger was over—but he couldn’t be sure. No one could be sure! Sulla dropped hints.

  That he was less aloof toward Servilia was due to his sudden appreciation of the fact that it was probably his marriage to her that had kept the Marcus Junius Brutus name off Sulla’s lists. This new honor Sulla was providing for patricians was just one more way in which Sulla was saying that the patrician was special, due more honors than the richest and most powerful plebeian of a consular family. And among the Patriciate, what name was more august than Servilius Caepio?

  “It is a pity,” said Servilia now, “that our son cannot have patrician status.”

  “My name is sufficiently old and revered for our son,” said Brutus stiffly. “We Junii Bruti are descended from the founder of the Republic.”

  “I’ve always found it odd,” said Servilia coolly, “that if that is really so, the present—day Junii Bruti are not patrician. For the founder of the Republic certainly was. You always talk of an expedient adoption into a plebeian family, but a plebeian family called Junius Brutus must have been descended from a slave or a peasant belonging to the patrician family.”

  This speech, which Brutus felt himself obliged to swallow, was one more indication that Servilia was no longer a silent and compliant wife. Her fear of divorce had lessened, and her sense of power had correspondingly grown. The child in the nursery, now two years old, meant everything to her. Whereas the child’s father meant nothing. That she intended to preserve her husband’s status was purely because of her son. But that didn’t mean she had to bow and scrape to Brutus as she had in the days before the old man’s treason had threatened everything.