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

by Colleen McCullough

  “Nothing was done to eject Tigranes from eastern Pedia?”

  “Nothing at all. Verres was too preoccupied with usury and extortion. Not to mention the pilfering of temple artifacts he considered wouldn’t be missed.”

  “I shall prosecute Dolabella and Verres as soon as I go home, so I shall need your help in gathering evidence.”

  “Dolabella will probably be in exile by the time you get home,” Morsimus said. “The governor had word from Rome that the son of Marcus Aemilius Scaurus and the lady Dalmatica is assembling a case against Dolabella even now, and that Gaius Verres is covering himself in glory by supplying young Scaurus with all his evidence—and that Verres will testify in court.”

  “The slippery fellator! That means I won’t be able to touch him. And I don’t suppose it matters who prosecutes Dolabella, as long as he gets his just deserts. If I’m sorry it won’t be me, that’s because I’m late into the courts thanks to my priesthood, and victory against Dolabella and Verres would have made me famous.” He paused, then said, “Will Vatia move against King Tigranes?”

  “I doubt it. He’s here specifically to eliminate pirates.”

  A statement confirmed by Vatia himself when Caesar sought an interview. An exact contemporary of Metellus Pius the Piglet (who was his close cousin into the bargain), Vatia was now fifty years old. Originally Sulla had intended that Vatia be consul with Gnaeus Octavius Ruso nine years earlier, but Cinna had beaten him in that election, and Vatia, like Metellus Pius, had had to wait a long time for the consulship which was his by birthright. His reward for unswerving loyalty to Sulla had been the governorship of Cilicia; he had preferred this province to the other consular province, Macedonia, which had in consequence gone to his colleague in the consulship, Appius Claudius Pulcher.

  “Who never got to Macedonia,” said Vatia to Caesar. “He fell ill in Tarentum on his way, and returned to Rome. Luckily this happened before the elder Dolabella had left Macedonia, so he’s been instructed to stay there until Appius Claudius is well enough to relieve him.”

  “What’s the matter with Appius Claudius?”

  “Something long—standing, is all I know. He wasn’t a fit man during our consulship—never cheered up no matter what I said! But he’s so impoverished he has to govern. If he doesn’t, he won’t be able to repair his fortune.”

  Caesar frowned, but kept his thoughts to himself. These dwelt upon the limitations inherent in a system which virtually forced a man sent to govern a province into a career of clerical crime; tradition had hallowed the right of a governor to sell citizenships, contracts, immunities from taxation and tithe, and pop the proceeds into his own hungry purse. Senate and Treasury unofficially condoned these activities in order to keep Rome’s costs down, one of the reasons why it was so hard to get a jury of senators to convict a governor of extortion in his province. But exploited provinces meant hatred of Rome, a rolling reckoning for the future.

  “I take it we are to go to war against the pirates, Publius Servilius?’’ Caesar asked.

  “Correct,” said the governor, surrounded by stacks of paper; clearly he enjoyed the clerical side of his duties, though he was not a particularly avaricious man and did not need to augment his fortune by provincial exploitation. Particularly when he was to go to war against the pirates, whose ill—gotten gains would give the governor of Cilicia plenty of legitimate spoils.

  “Unfortunately,” Vatia went on, “I will have to delay my campaign because of the straits to which my province has been reduced by the activities of my predecessor in this office. This year will have to be devoted to internal affairs.”

  “Then do you need me?” asked Caesar, too young to relish the idea of a military career spent at a desk.

  “I do need you,” said Vatia emphatically. “It will be your business to raise a fleet for me.”

  Caesar winced. “In that I do have some experience.”

  “I know. That’s why I wanted you. It will have to be a superior fleet, large enough to split into several flotillas if necessary. The days when pirates skipped round in open little hemioliai and myoparones have almost gone. These days they man fully decked triremes and biremes—even quinqueremes!—and are massed in fleets under the command of admirals—strategoi they call these men. They cruise the seas like navies, their flagships encrusted in gilt and purple. In their hidden bases they live like kings, employing chained gangs of free men to serve their wants. They have whole arsenals of weapons and every luxury a rich man in Rome might fancy. Lucius Cornelius made sure the Senate understood why he was sending me to a remote, unimportant place like Cilicia. It is here the pirates have their main bases, so it is here we must begin to clear them out.”

  “I could make myself useful by discovering whereabouts the pirate strongholds are—I’m sure I’d have no trouble managing that as well as the raising of a fleet.”

  “That won’t be necessary, Caesar. We already know the location of the biggest bases. Coracesium is notorious—though so well fortified by nature and by men that I doubt whether I or any other man will ever succeed in taking it. Therefore I intend to begin at the far end of my territory—in Pamphylia and Lycia. There is a pirate king called Zenicetes who controls the whole of the Pamphylian gulf, including Attaleia. It is he who will first feel Rome’s wrath.”

  “Next year?’’ asked Caesar.

  “Probably,” said Vatia, “though not before the late summer, I think. I cannot start to war against the pirates until Cilicia is properly regulated again and I am sure I have the naval and military strength to win.”

  “You expect to be prorogued for several years.”

  “The Dictator and the Senate have assured me I will not be hurried. I am to have however many years prove necessary. Lucius Cornelius is now retired, of course, but I do not believe the Senate will go against his wishes.”

  *

  Off went Caesar to raise a fleet, but not with enthusiasm; it would be more than a year before he saw action, and his assessment of Vatia’s character was that when war did come, Vatia would lack the speed and initiative the campaign called for. In spite of the fact that Caesar bore no love for Lucullus, there was no doubt in his mind that this second general he was serving under was no match in mind or ability for Lucullus.

  It was, however, an opportunity to do more traveling, and that was some compensation. The naval power without rival at this eastern end of the Middle Sea was Rhodes, so to Rhodes did Caesar betake himself in May. Always loyal to Rome (it had successfully defied King Mithridates nine years before), Rhodes could be relied upon to contribute vessels, commanders and crews to Vatia’s coming campaign, though not marine troops; the Rhodians did not board enemy ships and turn a naval engagement into a land—style fight.

  Luckily Gaius Verres had not had time to visit Rhodes, so Caesar found himself welcomed and the island’s war leaders willing to talk. Most of the dickering revolved around whether Rome was to pay Rhodes for its participation, which was unfortunate. Vatia felt none of the allied cities, islands and communities called upon to provide ships was entitled to any sort of payment in moneys; his argument was that every contributor would directly benefit from removal of the pirates, so ought to donate its services free of charge. Therefore Caesar was obliged to negotiate within his superior’s parameters.

  “Look at it this way,” he said persuasively. “Success means enormous spoils as well as relief from raids. Rome isn’t in a position to pay you, but you will share in the division of the spoils, and these will pay for your participation—and give you something over as profit. Rhodes is Friend and Ally of the Roman People. Why jeopardize that status? There are really only two alternatives—participation or nonparticipation. And you must decide now which it is going to be.”

  Rhodes yielded. Caesar got his ships, promised for the summer of the following year.

  From Rhodes he went to Cyprus, unaware that the ship he passed sailing into the harbor of Rhodus bore a precious Roman cargo; none other than Marcus Tull
ius Cicero, worn down by a year of marriage to Terentia and the delicate negotiations he had brought to a successful conclusion in Athens when his younger brother, Quintus, married the sister of Titus Pomponius Atticus. Cicero’s own union had just produced a daughter, Tullia, so he had been able to depart from Rome secure in the knowledge that his wife was fully occupied in mothering her babe. On Rhodes lived the world’s most famous teacher of rhetoric, Apollonius Molon, and to his school was Cicero going. He needed a holiday from Rome, from the courts, from Terentia and from his life as it was. His voice had gone, and Apollonius Molon was known to preach that an orator’s vocal and physical apparatus had to equal his mental skills. Though he loathed travel and feared that any absence from Rome would undermine his forensic career, Cicero was looking forward very much to this self-imposed exile far from his friends and family. Time for a rest.

  For Caesar there was to be no rest—not that one of Caesar’s temperament needed a rest. He disembarked in Paphos, which was the seat of Cyprus’s ruler, Ptolemy the Cyprian, younger brother of the new King of Egypt, Ptolemy Auletes. More a wastrel than a nonentity, the regent Ptolemy’s long residence at the courts of Mithridates and Tigranes showed glaringly during Caesar’s first interview with him. Not merely did he understand nothing; he wasn’t interested in understanding anything. His education seemed to have been entirely overlooked and his latent sexual preferences had asserted themselves the moment he left the custody of the kings, so that his palace was not unlike the palace of old King Nicomedes. Except that Ptolemy the Cyprian was not a likable man. The Alexandrians, however, had accurately judged him when he had first arrived in Alexandria with his elder brother and their wives; though the Alexandrians had not opposed his appointment as regent of Cyprus, they had sent a dozen efficient bureaucrats to Cyprus with him. It was these men, as Caesar discovered, who really ruled Cyprus on behalf of the island’s owner, Egypt.

  Having artfully evaded the advances of Ptolemy the Cyprian, Caesar devoted his energies to the Alexandrian bureaucrats. Not easy men to deal with—and no lovers of Rome—they could see nothing for Cyprus in Vatia’s coming campaign, and clearly had taken umbrage because Vatia had sent a junior legate twenty-one years old as his petitioner.

  “My youth,” said Caesar haughtily to these gentlemen, “is beside the point. I am a decorated war hero, a senator at an age when routine admission to the Senate is not permitted, and Publius Servilius Vatia’s chief military assistant. You ought to think yourselves lucky I deigned to drop in!”

  This statement was duly taken note of, but bureaucratic attitudes did not markedly change for the better. Argue like a politician though he did, Caesar could get nowhere with them.

  “Cyprus is affected by piracy too. Why can’t you see that the pirate menace will be eliminated only if all the lands which suffer from their depredations club together to eliminate them? Publius Servilius Vatia’s fleet has to be large enough to act like a net, sweeping the pirates before it into some place from which there is no way out. There will be enormous spoils, and Cyprus will be able to rejoin the trading markets of the Middle Sea. As you well know, at present the Cilician and Pamphylian pirates cut Cyprus off.”

  “Cyprus does not need to join the trading markets of the Middle Sea,” said the Alexandrian leader. “Everything Cyprus produces belongs to Egypt, and goes there. We tolerate no pirates on the seas between Cyprus and Egypt.”

  Back to the regent Ptolemy for a second interview. This time, however, Caesar’s luck asserted itself; the regent was in the company of his wife, Mithridatidis Nyssa. Had Caesar known what was the physical style of the Mithridatidae he would have seen that this young lady was a typical member of her house—large in frame, yellow of hair, eyes a greenish gold. Her charms were of coloring and voluptuousness rather than in any claim to true beauty, but Caesar instantly appreciated her charms. So, she made it obvious, did she appreciate Caesar’s charms. And when the silly interview with Ptolemy the Cyprian was over, she strolled out with her husband’s guest on her arm to show him the spot where the goddess Aphrodite had risen from the foam of the sea to embark upon her divine course of earthly havoc.

  “She was my thirty-nine—times great—grandmother,” said Caesar, leaning on the white marble balustrade which fenced the official site of the goddess’s birth off from the rest of the shore.

  “Who? Not Aphrodite, surely!”

  “Surely. I am descended from her through her son, Aeneas.”

  “Really?” The slightly protuberant eyes studied his face as if searching for some sign of this staggeringly august lineage.

  “Very much really, Princess.”

  “Then you belong to Love,” purred the daughter of Mithridates, and put out one long, spatulate finger to stroke Caesar’s sun—browned right arm.

  The touch affected him, though he did not show it. “I’ve never heard it put that way before, Princess, but it makes sense,” he said, smiling, looking out to the jewel of the horizon where the sapphire of the sea met the aquamarine of the sky.

  “Of course you belong to Love, owning such an ancestress!”

  He turned his head to gaze at her, eyes almost at the same level as hers, so tall was she. “It is remarkable,” he said in a soft voice, “that the sea produces so much foam at this place yet at no other, though I can see nothing to account for it.” He pointed first to the north and then to the south. “See? Beyond the limits of the fence there is no foam!”

  “It is said she left it to be here always.”

  “Then the bubbles are her essence.” He shrugged off his toga and bent to unbuckle his senatorial shoes. “I must bathe in her essence, Princess.”

  “If you were not her thirty-nine—times great—grandson, I would tell you to beware,” said the Princess, watching him.

  “Is it religiously forbidden to swim here?”

  “Not forbidden. Only unwise. Your thirty-nine—times great—grandmother has been known to smite bathers dead.”

  He returned unsmitten from his dip to find she had made a sheet out of her robe to cover the spiky shore grasses, and lay waiting for him upon it. One bubble was left, clinging to the back of his hand; he leaned over to press it gently against her virginally smooth nipple, laughed when it burst and she jumped, shivered uncontrollably.

  “Burned by Venus,” he said as he lay down with her, wet and exhilarated from the caress of that mysterious sea—foam. For he had just been anointed by Venus, who had even arranged for this superb woman to be on hand for his pleasure, child of a great king and (as he discovered when he entered her) his alone. Love and power combined, the ultimate consummation.

  “Burned by Venus,” she said, stretching like a huge golden cat, so great was the goddess’s gift.

  “You know the Roman name of Aphrodite,” said the goddess’s descendant, perfectly poised on a bubble of happiness.

  “Rome has a long reach.”

  The bubble vanished, but not because of what she said; the moment was over, was all.

  Caesar got to his feet, never enamored of lingering once the lovemaking was done. “So, Mithridatidis Nyssa, will you use your influence to help me get my fleet?’’ he asked, though he did not tell her why this request caused him to chuckle.

  “How very handsome you are,” she said, lying on her elbow, head propped on her hand. “Hairless, like a god.”

  “So are you, I note.”

  “All court women are plucked, Caesar.”

  “But not court men?”

  “No! It hurts.”

  He laughed. Tunic on, he dealt with his shoes, then began the difficult business of arranging his toga without assistance. “Up with you, woman!” he said cheerfully. “There’s a fleet to be obtained, and a hairy husband to convince that all we’ve been doing is looking at the sea—foam.”

  “Oh, him!” She started to dress. “He won’t care what we’ve been doing. Surely you noticed that I was a virgin!”

  “Impossible not to.”

  Her green—gold eyes
gleamed. “I do believe,” she said, “that if I were not in a position to help you raise your fleet, you would have spared me hardly a glance.”

  “I have to deny what you say,” he stated, but tranquilly. “I was once accused of doing exactly that to raise a fleet, and what I said then is still true—I would rather put my sword through my belly than employ women’s tricks to achieve my ends. But you, dear and lovely Princess, were a gift from the goddess. And that is a very different thing.”

  “I have not angered you?”

  “Not in the least, though you’re a sensible girl to have assumed it. Do you get your good sense from your father?”

  “Perhaps. He’s a clever man. But he’s a fool too.”

  “In what way?”

  “His inability to listen to advice from others.” She turned to walk with him toward the palace. “I’m very glad you came to Paphos, Caesar. I was tired of being a virgin.”

  “But you were a virgin. Why then with me?’’

  “You are the descendant of Aphrodite, therefore you are more than a mere man. I am the child of a king! I can’t give myself to a mere man, only to one of royal and divine blood.”

  “I am honored.”

  *

  The negotiations for the fleet took some time, time Caesar didn’t grudge. Every day he and Ptolemy the Cyprian’s unenjoyed wife made a pilgrimage to the birthplace of Aphrodite, and every day Caesar bathed in her essence before expending some of his own essence in Ptolemy the Cyprian’s greatly enjoyed wife. Clearly the Alexandrian bureaucrats had a great deal more respect for Mithridatidis Nyssa than for her husband—which may have had something to do with the fact that King Tigranes was just across the water in Syria. Egypt was remote enough to consider itself safe, but Cyprus was a different matter.

  He parted from the daughter of King Mithridates amicably, and with a regret which haunted him for a long time. Aside from his physical pleasure in her, he found that he liked and esteemed her unselfconscious assurance, her knowledge that she was any man’s equal because she was the child of a great king. A man could not exactly wipe his feet upon a Roman woman, Caesar reflected, but a Roman woman was nonetheless no man’s equal. So upon leaving Paphos, he gave Mithridatidis Nyssa an exquisitely carved cameo of the goddess, though he could ill afford the rare and costly striated stone it was worked upon.