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

by Colleen McCullough

  “I don’t quite understand.”

  “I mean they’ll keep, Aulus Gabinius. They’ll keep.”

  *

  Though the war was over, Pompey was too meticulous a man to pack up and march home bearing Perperna’s head on a spear. He liked to clean up his messes, which principally meant killing anyone he thought might prove a threat or a danger in the future. Among those who perished were Sertorius’s German wife and son, whom Pompey found in Osca when he accepted the capitulation of that frowning fortress in June. The thirty-year-old man who was pointed out to him as Sertorius’s son looked enough like him to make the tale credible, though he spoke no Latin and conducted himself like a Spaniard of the Illergetes.

  On hearing of Sertorius’s death, Clunia and Uxama repented of their submissions to Pompey, shut their gates and prepared to withstand siege. Pompey was happy to oblige them. Clunia fell. Uxama fell. So eventually did Calagurris, where the appalled Romans discovered that the men of the town had eaten their own women and children rather than surrender; Pompey had every living Calagurrian executed, then put not only the town but the entire district to the torch.

  Of course all through this, communications had flown back and forth between the victorious general and Rome. Not all the letters were official ones, nor all the documents for public dissemination; chief among Pompey’s correspondents was Philippus, who was crowing mightily in the Senate. The consuls of the year were two of Pompey’s secret clients, Lucius Gellius Poplicola and Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus, which meant that Pompey was able to petition them to secure the Roman citizenship for those Spaniards who had assisted him significantly. At the top of Pompey’s list was the same outlandish name, twice written; Kinahu Hadasht Byblos, uncle and nephew, aged thirty-three and twenty-eight respectively, citizens in good standing of Gades, Punic merchant princes. But they did not assume Pompey’s name, for it was no part of Pompey’s plan to let loose a flood of Spanish Gnaeus Pompeius This and That upon Rome. The Gadetanian uncle and nephew were put in the clientship of one of Pompey’s more recent legates, Lucius Cornelius Lentulus, a cousin of the consul. So they entered into Roman life and annals as Lucius Cornelius Balbus Major and Lucius Cornelius Balbus Minor.

  Still Pompey refused to hurry. The mines around New Carthage were reopened, the Contestani punished for attacking dear, dead Gaius Memmius: his sister was now a widow. He would have to do something about that when he returned to Rome! Slowly the province of Nearer Spain was carefully pieced together, given a properly organized bureaucracy, a tax structure, succinct rules and laws, and all the other adjuncts necessary to pronounce a place Roman.

  Then in the autumn Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus bade farewell to Spain, devoutly hoping he would never need to return. He had quite recovered his self-confidence and his good opinion of himself, though never again would he face any military adversary without a premonitory shudder, never again would he enter into any war unless he knew he outnumbered the enemy by several legions at least. And never again would he fight another Roman!

  At the crest of the pass through the Pyrenees the victorious general set up trophies, including armor which had belonged to Quintus Sertorius and the armor in which Perperna had lost his head. They hung sturdily stapled to tall poles with crossarms, pteryges flapping in the mournful mountain wind, a mute reminder to all who crossed from Gaul into Spain that it did not pay to go to war with Rome. Alongside the various trophies Pompey erected a cairn which bore a tablet on which he set forth his name, his title, his commission, the number of towns he had taken and the names of the men who had been rewarded with the Roman citizenship.

  After which he descended into Narbonese Gaul and spent the winter there feasting on shrimps and dug—mullets. Like his war, that year had seen a turn for the better; the harvests were good in both the Spains—but bountiful in Narbonese Gaul.

  *

  He did not plan to reach Rome until the middle of the year at the earliest, though not because he came home feeling any sense of failure. Simply, he didn’t know what to do next, where to go next, what pillar of Roman tradition and veneration to tumble. On the twenty-eighth day of September he would turn thirty-five years old, no longer the fresh—faced darling of the legions. Thus it behooved him to find a goal suitable for a man, not a boy. But what goal? Something the Senate would hate to give him, of that there could be no doubt. He could feel the answer lurking in the mazes of that part of his mind he shrank from exploring, but still it eluded him.

  Then he shrugged, cast all those thoughts away. There were more immediate things to do, such as opening up the new road he had pioneered across the Alps—survey it, pave it, make it—what? The Via Pompeia? That sounded good! But who wanted to die leaving the name of a road as his monument to glory? No, better to die leaving just the name itself. Pompey the Great. Yes, that said it all.

  PART VII

  from SEPTEMBER 78 B.C.

  until JUNE 71 B.C.

  1

  Caesar had seen no reason to hurry home after he left the service of Publius Servilius Vatia; rather, his journey was a tour of exploration of those parts of Asia Province and Lycia he had not yet visited. However, he was back in Rome by the end of September in the year Lepidus and Catulus were consuls to find Rome acutely apprehensive about the conduct of Lepidus, who had left the city to recruit in Etruria before doing what he was supposed to do—hold the curule elections. Civil war was in the air, everyone talked it.

  But civil war—real or imagined—was not high on Caesar’s list of priorities. He had personal matters to attend to.

  His mother seemed not to have aged at all, though there had been a change in her; she was very sad.

  “Because Sulla is dead!” her son accused, a challenge in his voice that went back to the days when he had thought Sulla was her lover.

  “Yes.”

  “Why? You owed him nothing!”

  “I owed him your life, Caesar.”

  “Which he put in jeopardy in the first place!”

  “I am sorry he is dead,” said Aurelia flatly.

  “I am not.”

  “Then let us change the subject.”

  Sighing, Caesar leaned back in his chair, acknowledging himself defeated. Her chin was up, a sure sign that she would not bend no matter what brilliant arguments he used.

  “It is time I took my wife into my bed, Mater.”

  Aurelia frowned. “She’s barely sixteen.”

  “Too young for a girl to marry, I agree. But Cinnilla has been married for nine years, and that makes her situation quite different. When she greeted me I could see in her eyes that she is ready to come to my bed.”

  “Yes, I think you’re right, my son. Though your grandfather would have said that the union of two patricians is fraught with peril in childbirth. I would have liked to see her just a little more grown up before she dealt with that.”

  “Cinnilla will be fine, Mater.”

  “Then when?”

  “Tonight.”

  “But there should be some sort of reinforcement of marriage first, Caesar. A family dinner—both your sisters are in Rome.”

  “There will be no family dinner. And no fuss.”

  Nor was there. Having been told no fuss, Aurelia didn’t mention the coming change in her status to her daughter-in-law, who, when she went to go to her own little room, found herself detained by Caesar in a suddenly empty triclinium.

  “It’s this way today, Cinnilla,” Caesar said, taking her by the hand and leading her toward the master’s sleeping cubicle.

  She went pale. “Oh! But I’m not ready!”

  “For this, no girl ever is. A good reason to get it over and done with. Then we can settle down together comfortably.”

  It had been a good idea to give her no time to spend in thinking about what was to come, though of course she had thought of little else for four long years. He helped her off with her clothes, and because he was incurably neat folded them carefully, enjoying this evidence of feminine occupation of
a room that had known no mistress since Aurelia had moved out after his father died. Cinnilla sat on the edge of the bed and watched him do this, but when he began to divest himself of his own clothes she shut her eyes.

  Done, he sat beside her and took both her hands in his, resting them upon his bare thigh.

  “Do you know what will happen, Cinnilla?”

  “Yes,” she said, eyes still closed.

  “Then look at my face.”

  The big dark eyes opened, fixed themselves painfully on his face, which was smiling and, she fancied, full of love.

  “How pretty you are, wife, and how nicely made.” He touched her breasts, full and high, with nipples almost the color of her tawny skin. Her hands came up to caress his, she sighed.

  Arms about her now, he kissed her, and this she found just wonderful, so long dreamed of, so much better than the dreams. She opened her lips to him, kissed him back, caressed him, found herself lying alongside him on the bed, her body responding with delicious flinches and shivers to this full—length contact with his. His skin, she discovered, was quite as silky as her own, and the pleasure it gave her to feel it warmed her to the quick.

  Though she had known exactly what would happen, imagination was no substitute for reality. For so many years she had loved him, made him the focus of her life, that to be his wife in flesh as well as at law was glorious. Worth the wait, the wait which had become a part of her state of exaltation. In no hurry, he made sure she was absolutely ready for him, and did nothing to her that belonged to more sophisticated realms than the dreams of virgin girls. He hurt her a little, but not nearly enough to spoil her spiraling excitement; to feel him within her was best of all, and she held him within her until some magical and utterly unexpected spasm invaded every part of her. That, no one had told her about. But that, she understood, was what made women want to remain married.

  When they rose at dawn to eat bread still hot from the oven and water cold from the stone cistern in the light—well garden, they found the dining room filled with roses and a flagon of light sweet wine on the sideboard. Tiny dolls of wool and ears of wheat hung from the lamps. Then came Aurelia to kiss them and wish them well, and the servants one by one, and Lucius Decumius and his sons.

  “How nice it is to be properly married at last!” said Caesar.

  “I quite agree,” said Cinnilla, who looked as beautiful and fulfilled as any bride ought to look after her wedding night.

  Gaius Matius, last to arrive, found the little celebratory breakfast enormously touching. None knew better than he how many women Caesar had enjoyed; yet this woman was his wife, and how wonderful it was to see that he was not disappointed. For himself, Gaius Matius doubted that he could have gratified a girl of Cinnilla’s age after living with her as a sister for nine long years. But evidently Caesar was made of sterner stuff.

  *

  It was at the first meeting of the Senate Caesar attended that Philippus succeeded in persuading that body to summon Lepidus back to Rome to hold the curule elections. And at the second meeting he heard Lepidus’s curt refusal read out, to be followed by the senatorial decree ordering Catulus back to Rome.

  But between that meeting and the third one Caesar had a visit from his brother-in-law, Lucius Cornelius Cinna.

  “There will be civil war,” young Cinna said, “and I want you to be on the winning side.”

  “Winning side?”

  “Lepidus’s side.”

  “He won’t win, Lucius. He can’t win.”

  “With all of Etruria and Umbria behind him he can’t lose!”

  “That’s the sort of thing people have been saying since the beginning of the world. I only know one person who can’t lose.”

  “And who might that be?” Cinna demanded, annoyed.

  “Myself.”

  A statement Cinna saw as exquisitely funny; he rolled about with laughter. “You know,” he said when he was able, “you really are an odd fish, Caesar!”

  “Perhaps I’m not a fish at all. I might be a fowl, which would certainly make an odd-looking fish. Or I might be a side of mutton on a hook in a butcher’s stall.”

  “I never know when you’re joking,” said Cinna uncertainly.

  “That’s because I rarely joke.”

  “Rubbish! You weren’t serious when you said you were the only man who couldn’t lose!”

  “I was absolutely serious.”

  “You won’t join Lepidus?”

  “Not if he were poised at the gates of Rome, Lucius.”

  “Well, you’re wrong. I’m joining him.”

  “I don’t blame you. Sulla’s Rome beggared you.”

  And off went young Cinna to Saturnia, where Lepidus and his legions lay. Issued this time by Catulus on behalf of the Senate, the second summons went to Lepidus, and again Lepidus refused to return to Rome. Before Catulus went back to Campania and his own legions, Caesar asked for an interview.

  “What do you want?” asked the son of Catulus Caesar coldly; he had never liked this too—beautiful, too—gifted young man.

  “I want to join your staff in case there’s war.”

  “I won’t have you on my staff.”

  Caesar’s eyes changed, assumed the deadly look Sulla’s used to get. “You don’t have to like me, Quintus Lutatius, to use me.”

  “How would I use you? Or to put it better, what use would you be to me? I hear you’ve already applied to join Lepidus.”

  “That’s a lie!”

  “Not from what I hear. Young Cinna went to see you before he left Rome and the two of you fixed it all up.”

  “Young Cinna came to wish me well, as is the duty of a brother-in-law after his sister’s marriage has been consummated.”

  Catulus turned his back. “You may have convinced Sulla of your loyalty, Caesar, but you’ll never convince me that you’re anything other than a troublemaker. I won’t have you because I won’t have any man on my staff whose loyalty is suspect.”

  “When—and if!—Lepidus marches, cousin, I will fight for Rome. If not as a member of your staff, then in some other capacity. I am a patrician Roman of the same blood family as you, and nobody’s client or adherent.” Halfway to the door, Caesar paused. “You would do well to file me in your mind as a man who will always abide by Rome’s constitution. I will be consul in my year—but not because a loser like Lepidus has made himself Dictator of Rome. Lepidus doesn’t have the courage or the steel, Catulus. Nor, I might add, do you.”

  Thus it was that Caesar remained in Rome while events ran at an ever—accelerating rate toward rebellion. The senatus consultum de re publica defendenda was passed, Flaccus Princeps Senatus died, the second interrex held elections, and finally Lepidus marched on Rome. Together with several thousand others of station high and low and in between, Caesar presented himself in full armor to Catulus on the Campus Martius; he was sent as a part of a group of several hundred to garrison the Wooden Bridge from Transtiberim into the city. Because Catulus would sanction no kind of command for this winner of the Civic Crown, Caesar did duty as a man in the ranks. He saw no action, and when the battle under the Servian Walls of the Quirinal was over, he betook himself home without bothering to volunteer for the chase after Lepidus up the coast of Etruria.

  Catulus’s arrogance and spite were not forgotten. But Gaius Julius Caesar was a patient hater; Catulus’s turn would come when the time was right. Until then, Catulus would wait.

  *

  Much to Caesar’s chagrin, when he had arrived in Rome he found the younger Dolabella already in exile and Gaius Verres strutting around oozing virtue and probity. Verres was now the husband of Metellus Caprarius’s daughter—and very popular with the knight electors, who thought his giving evidence against the younger Dolabella was a great compliment to the disenjuried Ordo Equester—here was a senator who was not afraid to indict one of his fellow senators!

  However, Caesar let it be known through Lucius Decumius and Gaius Matius that he would act as advocate for anyone
in the Subura, and busied himself during the months which saw the downfall of Lepidus and Brutus—and the rise of Pompey—with a series of court cases humble enough, yet highly successful. His legal reputation grew, connoisseurs of advocacy and rhetoric began to attend whichever court it was he pleaded before—mostly the urban or foreign praetor’s, but occasionally the Murder Court. Contrive to smear him though Catulus did, people listened to Catulus less and less because they liked what Caesar had to say, not to mention how he said it.

  When some of the cities of Macedonia and central Greece approached him to prosecute the elder Dolabella (back from his extended governorship because Appius Claudius Pulcher had finally arrived in his province), Caesar consented. This was the first really important trial he had undertaken, for it was to be heard in the quaestio de repetundae—the Extortion Court—and involved a man of highest family and great political clout. He knew little of the circumstances behind this elder Dolabella’s governorship, but proceeded to interview possible witnesses and gather evidence with meticulous care. His ethnarch clients found him a delight; scrupulously considerate of their rank, always pleasant and easy to get on with. Most amazing of all did they find his memory—what he had heard he never forgot, and would often seize upon some tiny, inadvertent statement which turned out to be far more important than anyone had realized.

  “However,” he said to his clients on the morning that the trial opened, “be warned. The jury is composed entirely of senators, and senatorial sympathies are very much on Dolabella’s side. He’s seen as a good governor because he managed to keep the Scordisci at bay. I don’t think we can win.”

  They didn’t win. Though the evidence was so strong only a senatorial jury hearing the case of a fellow senator could have ignored it—Caesar’s oratory was superb—the verdict was ABSOLVO. Caesar didn’t apologize to his clients, nor were they disappointed in his performance. Both the forensic presentation and Caesar’s speeches were hailed as the best in at least a generation, and men flocked to ask him to publish his speeches.