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

by Colleen McCullough

  The paperwork reproached silently and Thermus went back to it; within moments he had forgotten all about Gaius Julius Caesar and the impossible fleet.

  *

  Caesar went overland from Pergamum without permitting his tiny entourage a night’s rest in a Pergamum inn. He followed the course of the Caicus River to its sources before crossing a high ridge and coming down to the valley of the Macestus River, known as the Rhyndacus closer to the sea; the latter, it seemed from talking to various locals, he would do better not to aim for. Instead he turned off the Rhyndacus parallel to the coast of the Propontis and went to Prusa. There was, he had been told, just a chance that King Nicomedes was visiting his second—largest city. Prusa’s position on the flanks of an imposing snow—covered massif appealed to Caesar strongly, but the King was not in residence. On went Caesar to the Sangarius River, and, after a short ride to the west of it, came to the principal royal seat of Nicomedia dreaming upon its long, sheltered inlet.

  So different from Italy! Bithynia, he had discovered, was soft in climate rather than hot, and amazingly fertile thanks to its series of rivers, all flowing more strongly at this time of year than Italian rivers. Clearly the King ruled a prosperous realm, and his people wanted for nothing. Prusa had contained no poverty—stricken inhabitants; nor, it turned out, did Nicomedia.

  The palace stood upon a knoll above the town, yet within the formidable walls. Caesar’s initial impression was of Greek purity of line, Greek colors, Greek design—and considerable wealth, even if Mithridates had ruled here for several years while the Bithynian king had retreated to Rome. He never remembered seeing the King in Rome, but that was not surprising; Rome allowed no ruling king to cross the pomerium, so Nicomedes had rented a prohibitively expensive villa on the Pincian Hill and done all his negotiating with the Senate from that location.

  At the door of the palace Caesar was greeted by a marvelously effeminate man of unguessable age who eyed him up and down with an almost slavering appreciation, sent another effeminate fellow off with Caesar’s servants to stable the horses and the mule, and conducted Caesar to an anteroom where he was to wait until the King had been informed and his accommodation decided upon. Whether Caesar would succeed in obtaining an immediate audience with the King, the steward (for so he turned out to be) could not say.

  The little chamber where Caesar waited was cool and very beautiful, its walls unfrescoed but divided into a series of panels formed by plaster moldings, the cornices gilded to match the panel borders and pilasters. Inside the panels the color was a soft shell—pink, outside them a deep purplish—red.

  The floor was a marble confection in purples and pinks, and the windows—which looked onto what seemed to be the palace gardens—were shuttered from the outside, thus loomed as framed landscapes of exquisite terraces, fountains, blooming shrubs. So lush were the flowers that their perfumes seeped into the room; Caesar stood inhaling, his eyes closed.

  What opened them was the sound of raised voices coming from beyond a half—opened door set into one wall: a male voice, high and lisping, and a female voice, deep and booming.

  “Jump!” said the woman. “Upsy—daisy!”

  “Rubbish!” said the man. “You degrade it!”

  “Oozly—woozly—soozly!” said the woman, and produced a huge whinny of laughter.

  “Go away!” from the man.

  “Diddums!” from the woman, laughing again.

  Perhaps it was bad manners, but Caesar didn’t care; he moved to a spot from which his eyes could see what his ears were already hearing. The scene in the adjacent chamber—obviously some sort of private sitting room—was fascinating. It involved a very old man, a big woman perhaps ten years younger, and an elderly, roly—poly dog of some smallish breed Caesar didn’t recognize. The dog was performing tricks—standing on its hind legs to beg, lying down and squirming over, playing dead with all four feet in the air. Throughout its repertoire it kept its eyes fixed upon the woman, evidently its owner.

  The old man was furious. “Go away, go away, go away!” he shouted. As he wore the white ribbon of the diadem around his head, the watcher in the other room deduced he was King Nicomedes.

  The woman (the Queen, as she also wore a diadem) bent over to pick up the dog, which scrambled hastily to its feet to avoid being caught, ran round behind her, and bit her on her broad plump bottom. Whereupon the King fell about laughing, the dog played dead again, and the Queen stood rubbing her buttock, clearly torn between anger and amusement. Amusement won, but not before the dog received her well-aimed foot neatly between its anus and its testicles. It yelped and fled, the Queen in hot pursuit.

  Alone (apparently he didn’t know the next—door room was occupied, nor had anyone yet told him of Caesar’s advent), the King’s laughter died slowly away. He sat down in a chair and heaved a sigh, it would seem of satisfaction.

  Just as Marius and Julia had experienced something of a shock when they had set eyes upon this king’s father, so too did Caesar absorb King Nicomedes the Third with considerable amazement. Tall and thin and willowy, he wore a floor—length robe of Tyrian purple embroidered with gold and sewn with pearls, and flimsy pearl—studded golden sandals which revealed that he gilded his toenails. Though he wore his own hair—cut fairly short and whitish—grey in color—he had caked his face with an elaborate maquillage of snow—white cream and powder, carefully drawn in soot—black brows and lashes, artificially pinkened his cheeks, and heavily carmined his puckered old mouth.

  “I take it,” said Caesar, strolling into the room, “that Her Majesty got what she deserved.”

  The King of Bithynia goggled. There before him stood a young Roman, clad for the road in plain leather cuirass and kilt. He was very tall and wide—shouldered, but the rest of him looked more slender, except that the calves of his legs were well developed above finely turned ankles wrapped around with military boots. Crowned by a mop of pale gold hair, the Roman’s head was a contradiction in terms, as its cranium was so large and round that it looked bulbous, whereas its face was long and pointed. What a face! All bones—but such splendid bones, stretched over with smooth pale skin, and illuminated by a pair of large, widely spaced eyes set deep in their sockets. The fair brows were thinnish, the fair lashes thick and long; the eyes themselves could be, the King suspected, disquieting, for their light blue irises were ringed with a blue so dark it appeared black, and gave the black pupils a piercing quality softened at the moment by amusement. To the individual taste of the King, however, all else was little compared to the young man’s mouth, full yet disciplined, and with the most kissable, dented corners.

  “Well, hello!” said the King, sitting upright in a hurry, his pose one of bridling seductiveness.

  “Oh, stop that!” said Caesar, inserting himself into a chair opposite the King’s.

  “You’re too beautiful not to like men,” the King said, then looked wistful. “If only I were even ten years younger!”

  “How old are you?” asked Caesar, smiling to reveal white and regular teeth.

  “Too old to give you what I’d like to!”

  “Be specific—about your age, that is.”

  “I am eighty.”

  “They say a man is never too old.”

  “To look, no. To do, yes.”

  “Think yourself lucky you can’t rise to the occasion,” said Caesar, still smiling easily. “If you could, I’d have to wallop you—and that would create a diplomatic incident.”

  “Rubbish!” scoffed the King. “You’re far too beautiful to be a man for women.”

  “In Bithynia, perhaps. In Rome, certainly not.”

  “Aren’t you even tempted?”

  “No.”

  “What a disgraceful waste!”

  “I know a lot of women who don’t think so.”

  “I’ll bet you’ve never loved one of them.”

  “I love my wife,” said Caesar.

  The King looked crushed. “I will never understand Romans!” he exclaime
d. “You call the rest of the world barbarian, but it is you who are not civilized.”

  Draping one leg over the arm of his chair, Caesar swung its foot rhythmically. “I know my Homer and Hesiod,” he said.

  “So does a bird, if you teach it.”

  “I am not a bird, King Nicomedes.”

  “I rather wish you were! I’d keep you in a golden cage just to look at you.”

  “Another household pet? I might bite you.”

  “Do!” said the King, and bared his scrawny neck.

  “No, thanks.”

  “This is getting us nowhere!” said the King pettishly.

  “Then you have absorbed the lesson.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Gaius Julius Caesar, and I’m a junior military tribune attached to the staff of Marcus Minucius Thermus, governor of Asia Province.”

  “Are you here in an official capacity?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why didn’t Thermus notify me?”

  “Because I travel faster than heralds and couriers do, though why your own steward hasn’t announced me I don’t know,” said Caesar, still swinging his foot.

  At that moment the steward entered the room, and stood aghast to see the visitor sitting with the King.

  “Thought you’d get in first, eh?” asked the King. “Well, Sarpedon, abandon all hope! He doesn’t like men.” His head turned back to Caesar, eyes curious. “Julius. Patrician?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you a relative of the consul who was killed by Gaius Marius? Lucius Julius Caesar?”

  “He and my father were first cousins.”

  “Then you’re the flamen Dialis!”

  “I was the flamen Dialis. You’ve spent time in Rome.”

  “Too much of it.” Suddenly aware the steward was still in the room, the King frowned. “Have you arranged accommodation for our distinguished guest, Sarpedon?”

  “Yes, sire.”

  “Then wait outside.”

  Bowing severally, the steward eased himself out backward.

  “What are you here for?’’ asked the King of Caesar.

  The leg was returned to the floor; Caesar sat up squarely. “I’m here to obtain a fleet.”

  No particular expression came into the King’s eyes. “Hmm! A fleet, eh? How many ships are you after, and what kind?”

  “You forgot to ask when by,” said this awkward visitor.

  “Add, when by.”

  “I want forty ships, half of which must be decked triremes or larger, all collected in the port of your choice by the middle of October,” said Caesar.

  “Two and a half months away? Oh, why not just cut off both my legs?” yelled Nicomedes, leaping to his feet.

  “If I don’t get what I want, I will.”

  The King sat down again, an arrested look in his eyes. “I remind you, Gaius Julius, that this is my kingdom, not a province of Rome,” he said, his ridiculously carmined mouth unable to wear such anger appropriately. “I will give you whatever I can whenever I can! You ask! You don’t demand.”

  “My dear King Nicomedes,” said Caesar in a friendly way, “you are a mouse caught in the middle of a path used by two elephants—Rome and Pontus.” His eyes had ceased to smile, and Nicomedes was suddenly hideously reminded of Sulla. “Your father died at an age too advanced to permit you tenure of this throne before you too were an old man. The years since your accession have surely shown you how tenuous your position is—you’ve spent as many of them in exile as you have in this palace, and you are only here now because Rome in the person of Gaius Scribonius Curio put you back. If Rome, which is a great deal further away from Pontus than you are, is well aware that King Mithridates is far from finished—and far from being an old man!—then you too must know it. The land of Bithynia has been called Friend and Ally of the Roman People since the days of the second Prusias, and you yourself have tied yourself inextricably to Rome. Evidently you’re more comfortable ruling than in exile. That means you must co-operate with Rome and Rome’s requests. Otherwise, Mithridates of Pontus will come galumphing down the path toward Rome galumphing the opposite way—and you, poor little mouse, will be squashed flat by one set of feet—or the other.”

  The King sat without a thing to say, crimson lips agape, eyes wide. After a long and apparently breathless pause, he took air into his chest with a gasp, and his eyes filled with tears. “That isn’t fair!” he said, and broke down completely.

  Exasperated beyond endurance, Caesar got to his feet, one hand groping inside the armhole of his cuirass for a handkerchief; he walked across to the King and thrust the piece of cloth at him. “For the sake of the position you hold, compose yourself! Though it may have commenced informally, this is an audience between the King of Bithynia and Rome’s designated representative. Yet here you sit bedizened like a saltatrix tonsa, and snivel when you hear the unvarnished truth! I was not brought up to chastise venerable grandfathers who also happen to be Rome’s client kings, but you invite it! Go and wash your face, King Nicomedes, then we’ll begin again.”

  Docile as a child, the King of Bithynia got up and left.

  In a very short time he was back, face scrubbed clean, and accompanied by several servants bearing trays of refreshments.

  “The wine of Chios,” said the King, sitting down and beaming at Caesar without, it seemed, resentment. “Twenty years old!”

  “I thank you, but I’d rather have water.”

  “Water?”

  The smile was back in Caesar’s eyes. “I am afraid so. I have no liking for wine.”

  “Then it’s as well that the water of Bithynia is renowned,” said the King. “What will you eat?”

  Caesar shrugged indifferently. “It doesn’t matter.”

  King Nicomedes now bent a different kind of gaze upon his guest; searching, unaffected by his delight in male beauty. So he looked beyond what had previously fascinated him in Caesar, down into the layers below. “How old are you, Gaius Julius?”

  “I would prefer that you call me Caesar.”

  “Until you begin to lose your wonderful head of hair,” said the King, betraying the fact that he had been in Rome long enough to learn at least some Latin.

  Caesar laughed. “I agree it is difficult to bear a cognomen meaning a fine head of hair! I’ll just have to hope that I follow the Caesars in keeping it into old age, rather than the Aurelians in losing it.” He paused, then said, “I’m just nineteen.”

  “Younger than my wine!” said the King in a voice of wonder. “You have Aurelius in you too? Orestes or Cotta?”

  “My mother is an Aurelia of the Cottae.”

  “And do you look like her? I don’t see much resemblance in you to Lucius Caesar or Caesar Strabo.”

  “I have some characteristics from her, some from my father. If you want to find the Caesar in me, think not of Lucius Caesar’s younger brother, but his older one—Catulus Caesar. All three of them died when Gaius Marius came back, if you remember.”

  “Yes.” Nicomedes sipped his Chian wine pensively, then said, “I usually find Romans are impressed by royalty. They seem in love with the philosophy of being Republican, but susceptible to the reality of kingship. You, however, are not a bit impressed.”

  “If Rome had a king, sire, I’d be it,” said Caesar simply.

  “Because you’re a patrician?”

  “Patrician?” Caesar looked incredulous. “Ye gods, no! I am a Julian! That means I go back to Aeneas, whose father was a mortal man, but whose mother was Venus—Aphrodite.”

  “You are descended from Aeneas’s son, Ascanius?”

  “We call Ascanius by the name Iulus,” said Caesar.

  “The son of Aeneas and Creusa?”

  “Some say so. Creusa died in the flames of Troy, but her son did escape with Aeneas and Anchises, and did come to Latium. But Aeneas also had a son by Lavinia, the daughter of King Latinus. And he too was called Ascanius, and Iulus.”

  “So which son of Aene
as are you descended from?”

  “Both,” said Caesar seriously. “I believe, you see, that there was only one son—the puzzle lies in who mothered him, as everyone knows his father was Aeneas. It is more romantic to believe that Iulus was the son of Creusa, but more likely, I think, that he was the son of Lavinia. After Aeneas died and Iulus grew up, he founded the city of Alba Longa on the Alban Mount—uphill from Bovillae, you might say. Iulus died there, and left his family behind to continue to rule—the Julii. We were the Kings of Alba Longa, and after it fell to King Servius Tullius of Rome, we were brought into Rome as her foremost citizens. We are still Rome’s foremost citizens, as is demonstrated by the fact that we are the hereditary priests of Jupiter Latiaris, who is older by far than Jupiter Optimus Maximus.”

  “I thought the consuls celebrated those rites,” said King Nicomedes, revealing more knowledge of things Roman.

  “Only at his annual festival, as a concession to Rome.”

  “Then if the Julii are so august, why haven’t they been more prominent during the centuries of the Republic?’’

  “Money,” said Caesar.

  “Oh, money!” exclaimed the King, looking enlightened. “A terrible problem, Caesar! For me too. I just haven’t the money to give you your fleet—Bithynia is broke.”

  “Bithynia is not broke, and you will give me my fleet, O king of mice! Otherwise—splosh! You’ll be spread as thin as a wafer under an elephant’s foot.”

  “I haven’t got it to give you!”

  “Then what are we doing sitting wasting time?” Caesar stood. “Put down your cup, King Nicomedes, and start up the machinery!” A hand went under the King’s elbow. “Come on, up with you! We will go down to the harbor and see what we can find.”