This third barb pierced him to the marrow. Cato stiffened, his beautiful hands clenched into fists. “I can tolerate your malice when it’s aimed at me, Servilia, but not when your target is Caepio!” he roared. “That is an undeserved slur! Caepio is your full brother, not my full brother! Oh, I wish he was my full brother! I love him more than anyone else in the world! But I will not permit that slur, especially coming from you!”
“Look in your mirror, Cato. All of Rome knows the truth.”
“Our mother was part Rutilian—Caepio inherited his coloring from that side of her family!”
“Rubbish! The Rutilians are sandy-fair, on the short side, and quite lacking the nose of a Cato Salonianus.” Servilia snorted contemptuously. “Like to like, Cato. From the time of your birth, Caepio gave himself to you. You’re peas from the same pod, and you’ve stayed as thick as pea soup all your lives. Won’t be parted, never argue—Caepio is your full brother, not mine!”
Cato got up. “You’re a wicked woman, Servilia.”
She yawned ostentatiously. “You just lost the battle, Cato. Goodbye, and good riddance.”
He flung his final word behind him as he left the room: “I will win in the end! I always win!”
“Over my dead body you’ll win! But you’ll be dead before me.”
After which she had to deal with another of the men in her life: her husband, Decimus Junius Silanus, whom she had to admit Cato had summed up neatly as a puking ninny. Whatever was the matter with his gut, he did have a tendency to vomit, and he was inarguably a shy, resigned, rather characterless man. All of his goods, she thought to herself as she watched him pick his way through dinner, are on his countertop. He’s just a pretty face, there’s nothing behind. Yet that is so obviously not true of another pretty face, the one belonging to Gaius Julius Caesar. Caesar… I am fascinated with him, by him. For a moment there I thought I was fascinating him too, but then I let my tongue run away with me, and offended him. Why did I forget he’s a Julian? Even a patrician Servilian like me doesn’t presume to arrange the life or the affairs of a Julian….
The two girls she had borne Silanus were at dinner, tormenting Brutus as usual (they deemed Brutus a weed). Junia was a little younger than Caesar’s Julia, seven, and Junilla was almost six. Both were medium brown in coloring, and extremely attractive; no fear they would displease their husbands! Very good looks and fat dowries were an irresistible combination. They were, however, already formally betrothed to the heirs of two great houses. Only Brutus was uncommitted, though he had made his own choice very clear. Little Julia. How odd he was, to have fallen in love with a child! Though she did not usually admit it to herself, this evening she was in a mood for truth, and acknowledged that Brutus was sometimes a puzzle to her. Why for instance did he persist in fancying himself an intellectual? If he didn’t pull himself out of that particular slough, his public career would not prosper; unless like Caesar they also had tremendous reputations as brave soldiers, or like Cicero had tremendous reputations in the law courts, intellectuals were despised. Brutus wasn’t vigorous and swift and outgoing like either Caesar or Cicero. A good thing perhaps that he would become Caesar’s son-in-law. Some of that magical energy and charm would rub off, had to rub off. Caesar…
Who sent her a message the following day that he would be pleased to see her privately in his rooms on the lower Vicus Patricii, two floors up in the apartment building between the Fabricius dye works and the Suburan Baths. At the fourth hour of day on the morrow, one Lucius Decumius would be waiting in the ground-floor passage to conduct her upstairs.
*
Though Antistius Vetus’s term as governor of Further Spain had been extended, Caesar had not been honor-bound to remain there with him; Caesar had not bothered to secure a personal appointment, just taken his chances of a province in the lots. In one way it might have been enjoyable to linger in Further Spain, but the post of quaestor was too junior to serve as the basis for a great Forum reputation. Caesar was well aware that the next few years of his life must be spent as much as possible in Rome: Rome must constantly see his face, Rome must constantly hear his voice.
Because he had won the Civic Crown for outstanding valor at the age of twenty, he had been admitted to the Senate ten years before the customary age of thirty, and was allowed to speak inside that chamber from the very beginning instead of existing under the law of silence until he was elected a magistrate of higher rank than quaestor. Not that he had abused this extraordinary privilege; Caesar was too shrewd to make himself a bore by adding himself to a list of speakers already far too long. He didn’t have to use oratory as a means of attracting attention, as he carried a visible reminder of his near-unique position on his person. Sulla’s law stipulated that whenever he appeared on public business, he must wear the Civic Crown of oak leaves upon his head. And everyone at sight of him was obliged to rise and applaud him, even the most venerable consulars and censors. It set him apart and above, two states of being he liked very much. Others might cultivate as many influential intimates as they could; Caesar preferred to walk alone. Oh, a man had to have hordes of clients, be known as a patron of tremendous distinction. But rising to the top—he was determined he would!—by bonding himself to a clique was not a part of Caesar’s plans. Cliques controlled their members.
There were the boni, for example: the “good men.” Of all the many factions in the Senate, they had the most clout. They could often dominate the elections, staff the major courts, cry loudest in the Assemblies. Yet the boni stood for nothing! The most one could say about them was that the only thing they had in common with each other was a rooted dislike of change. Whereas Caesar approved of change. There were so many things screaming out for alteration, amendment, abolition! Indeed, if service in Further Spain had shown Caesar anything, it was that change had to come. Gubernatorial corruption and rapacity would kill the empire unless they were curbed; and that was only one change among the many he wanted to see. Wanted to implement. Every aspect of Rome desperately needed attention, regulation. Yet the boni traditionally and adamantly opposed change of the most minor kind. Not Caesar’s sort of people. Nor was Caesar popular with them; their exquisitely sensitive noses had sniffed out the radical in Caesar a long time ago.
In fact, there was only one sure road to where Caesar was going: the road of military command. Yet before he could legally general one of Rome’s armies he would have to rise at least as high as praetor, and to secure election as one of these eight men who supervised the courts and system of justice required that the next six years be spent inside the city. Canvassing, electioneering, struggling to cope with the chaotic political scene. Keeping his person at the forefront of his world, gathering influence, power, clients, knight supporters from the commercial sphere, followers of all sorts. As himself and solely for himself, not as one of the boni or any other group which insisted its members think alike—or preferably not bother to think at all.
Though Caesar’s ambition extended beyond leading his own faction; he wanted to become an institution called the First Man in Rome. Primus inter pares, the first among his equals, all things to all men, owning the most auctoritas, the most dignitas; the First Man in Rome was clout personified. Whatever he said was listened to, and no one could pull him down because he was neither King nor Dictator; he held his position by sheer personal power, was what he was through no office, no army at his back. Old Gaius Marius had done it the hard way, by conquering the Germans, for he had owned no ancestors to tell men he deserved to be the First Man in Rome. Sulla had the ancestors, but did not earn the title because he made himself Dictator. Simply, he was Sulla—great aristocrat, autocrat, winner of the awesome Grass Crown, undefeated general. A military legend hatched in the political arena, that was the First Man in Rome.
Therefore the man who would be the First Man in Rome could not belong to a faction; he had to create a faction, stand forth in the Forum Romanum as no one’s minion, yet a most fearsome ally. In this Rome of today, being
a patrician made it easier, and Caesar was a patrician. His remote ancestors had been members of the Senate when it had consisted of a mere hundred men who advised the King of Rome. Before Rome so much as existed, his ancestors had been kings themselves, of Alba Longa on the Alban Mount. And before that, his thirty-nine times great-grandmother was the Goddess Venus herself; she had borne Aeneas, King of Dardania, who had sailed to Latin Italia and set up a new kingdom in what would one day be the home domain of Rome. To come from such stellar stock predisposed people to look to a man as leader of their faction; Romans liked men with ancestors, and the more august the ancestors were, the better a man’s chances to create his own faction.
Thus it was that Caesar understood what he had to do between now and the consulship, nine years away. He had to predispose men to look upon him as worthy to become the First Man in Rome. Which didn’t mean conciliating his peers; it meant dominating those who were not his peers. His peers would fear him and hate him, as they did all who aspired to be called the First Man in Rome. His peers would fight his ambition tooth and nail, stop at nothing to bring him down before he was too powerful ever to bring down. That was why they loathed Pompey the Great, who fancied himself the present First Man in Rome. Well, he wouldn’t last. The title belonged to Caesar, and nothing, animate or inanimate, would stop his taking it. He knew that because he knew himself.
*
At dawn on the day after he arrived home, it was gratifying to discover that a tidy little band of clients had presented themselves to pay him their compliments; his reception room was full of them, and Eutychus the steward was beaming all over his fat face at sight of them. So too was old Lucius Decumius beaming, chirpy and angular as a cricket, hopping eagerly from foot to foot when Caesar emerged from his private rooms.
A kiss on the mouth for Lucius Decumius, much to the awe of many who witnessed their meeting.
“I missed you more than anyone except Julia, dad,” said Caesar, enfolding Lucius Decumius in a huge hug.
“Rome are not the same without you either, Pavo!” was the reply, and using the old nickname of Peacock he had given Caesar when Caesar had been a toddler.
“You never seem to get any older, dad.”
That was true. No one really knew what age Lucius Decumius actually owned, though it had to be closer to seventy than sixty. He would probably live forever. Of the Fourth Class only and the urban tribe Suburana, he would never be important enough to have a vote which counted in any Assembly, yet Lucius Decumius was a man of great influence and power in certain circles. He was the custodian of the crossroads college which had its headquarters in Aurelia’ s insula, and every man who lived in the neighborhood, no matter how high his Class, was obliged to pay his respects at least from time to time inside what was as much a tavern as a religious meeting place. As custodian of his college, Lucius Decumius wielded authority; he had also managed to accumulate considerable wealth due to many nefarious activities, and was not averse to lending it at very reasonable rates of interest to those who might one day be able to serve Lucius Decumius’s ends—or the ends of his patron, Caesar. Caesar whom he loved more than either of his two stout sons, Caesar who had shared some of his questionable adventures when a boy, Caesar, Caesar…
“Got your rooms down the road all ready for you,” said the old man, grinning broadly. “New bed—very nice.”
The rather icy pale-blue eyes lit up; Caesar returned the grin together with a wink. “I’ll sample it before I pass my personal verdict on that, dad. Which reminds me—would you take a message to the wife of Decimus Junius Silanus?”
Lucius Decumius frowned. “Servilia?”
“I see the lady is famous.”
“Couldn’t not be. She’s a hard woman on her slaves.”
“How do you know that? I imagine her slaves frequent a crossroads college on the Palatine.”
“Word gets round, word gets round! She’s not above ordering crucifixion when she thinks they needs a lesson. Has it done in the garden under all eyes. Mind you, she do have ’em flogged first, so they don’t last long once they’re tied up on a cross.”
“That’s thoughtful of her,” said Caesar, and proceeded to relay the message for Servilia. He did not make the mistake of thinking that Lucius Decumius was trying to warn him against getting involved with her, nor had the presumption to criticize his taste; Lucius Decumius was simply doing his duty and passing on relevant information.
Food mattered little to Caesar—no gourmet, and certainly not of the Epicurean persuasion—so as he passed from client to client he chewed absently on a bread roll crisp and fresh from Aurelia’s baker down the road, and drank a beaker of water. Aware of Caesar’s open-handedness, his steward had already gone the rounds with platters of the same rolls, watered wine for those who preferred it to plain water, little bowls of oil or honey for dipping. How splendid to see Caesar’s clientele increasing!
Some had come for no other reason than to show him they were his to command, but others had come for a specific purpose: a reference for a job they wanted, a position for a properly schooled son in some Treasury or Archives slot, or what did Caesar think of this offer for a daughter, or that offer for a piece of land? A few were there to ask for money, and they too were obliged with ready cheerfulness, as if Caesar’s purse was as deep as Marcus Crassus’s when in actual fact it was extremely shallow.
Most of the clients departed once the courtesies had been exchanged and some conversation had passed. Those who remained needed a few lines of writing from him, and waited while he sat at his desk dispensing papers. With the result that more than four of the lengthening spring hours had passed before the last of the visitors left, and the rest of the day belonged to Caesar. They had not gone far, of course; when he came out of his apartment an hour later, having dealt with his more pressing correspondence, they attached themselves to him to escort him wherever his business might lead him. A man with clients had to show them off publicly!
Unfortunately no one of significance was present in the Forum Romanum when Caesar and his retinue arrived at the bottom of the Argiletum and walked between the Basilica Aemilia and the steps of the Curia Hostilia. And there it lay, the absolute center of the entire Roman world: the lower Forum Romanum, a space liberally sprinkled with objects of reverence or antiquity or utility. Some fifteen months since he had seen it. Not that it had changed. It never did.
The Well of the Comitia yawned in front of him, a deceptively small circular tier of broad steps leading down below ground level, the structure in which both Plebeian and Popular Assemblies met. When jam-packed it could hold about three thousand men. In its back wall, facing the side of the Curia Hostilia steps, was the rostra, from which the politicians addressed the crowd clustered in the Well below. And there was the venerably ancient Curia Hostilia itself, home of the Senate through all the centuries since King Tullus Hostilius had built it, too tiny for Sulla’s larger enrollment, looking shabby despite the wonderful mural on its side. The Pool of Curtius, the sacred trees, Scipio Africanus atop his tall column, the beaks of captured ships mounted on more columns, statues galore on imposing plinths glaring furiously like old Appius Claudius the Blind or looking smugly serene like wily and brilliant old Scaurus Princeps Senatus. The flagstones of the Sacra Via were more worn than the travertine paving around it (Sulla had replaced the paving, but the mos maiorum forbade any improvement in the road). On the far side of the open space cluttered by two or three tribunals stood the two dowdy basilicae Opimia and Sempronia, with the glorious temple of Castor and Pollux to their left. How meetings and courts and Assemblies managed to occur between so many groups of impedimenta was a mystery, but they did—always had, always would.
To the north there reared the bulk of the Capitol, one hump higher than its twin, an absolute confusion of temples with gaudily painted pillars, pediments, gilded statues atop orange-tiled roofs. Jupiter Optimus Maximus’s new home (the old one had burned down some years earlier) was still a-building, Caesar not
ed with a frown; Catulus was definitely a tardy custodian of the process, never in enough of a hurry. But Sulla’s enormous Tabularium was now well and truly finished, filling in the whole front-central side of the mount with arcaded storeys and galleries designed to house all of Rome’s archives, laws, accounts. And at the bottom of the Capitol were other public premises—the temple of Concord, and next to it the little old Senaculum, in which foreign delegations were received by the Senate.
In the far corner beyond the Senaculum, dividing the Vicus Iugarius from the Clivus Capitolinus, lay Caesar’s destination. This was the temple of Saturn, very old and large and severely Doric except for the garish colors bedaubing its wooden walls and pillars, home of an ancient statue of the God that had to be kept filled with oil and swaddled with cloth to prevent its disintegration. Also—and more germane to Caesar’s purpose—it was the home of the Treasury of Rome.
The temple itself was mounted atop a podium twenty steps high, a stone infrastructure within which lay a labyrinth of corridors and rooms. Part of it was a repository for laws once they had been engraved on stone or bronze, as Rome’s largely unwritten constitution demanded that all laws be deposited there; but time and the plethora of tablets now dictated that a new law be whisked in one entrance and out another for storage elsewhere.
By far the bulk of the space belonged to the Treasury. Here in strong rooms behind great internal iron doors lay Rome’s tangible wealth as bullion—ingots of gold and silver amounting to many thousands of talents. Here in dingy offices lit by flickering oil lamps and grilles high in the outside walls there worked the nucleus of the civil servants who kept Rome’s public account books, from those senior enough to qualify as tribuni aerarii to humble ledger-enterers and even humbler public slaves who swept the dusty floors but usually contrived to ignore the cobwebs festooning the walls.
Masters of Rome Boxset: First Man in Rome, the Grass Crown, Fortune's Favourites, Caesar's Women, Caesar Page 367