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

by Colleen McCullough

  “It didn’t sit well with the House,” said Crassus. “You could have heard a moth land on a toga. Nepos must have realized he’d harmed himself more than he’d managed to harm you, because when Afranius pronounced sentence he said something equally rude to Afranius—the old ‘son of Aulus’ jibe—and walked out.”

  “I’m disappointed in Nepos, I thought he had more finesse.”

  “Or perhaps he’s cherishing a tendency that way himself,” rumbled Crassus. “It was very funny at the time, but thinking about how he used to carry on during meetings of the Plebs when he was a tribune, he always made much of fluttering his eyelashes and blowing kisses at hulking lumps like Thermus.”

  “All of which,” said Caesar, rising to his feet as Crassus did, “is beside the point. Nepos has eroded my dignitas. That means I’ll have to erode Nepos.”

  When he returned to the parlor after ushering Crassus out, he found Balbus wiping away tears.

  “Grief over something as trite as Nepos?’’ he asked.

  “I know your pride, so I know how it hurts.”

  “Yes,” said Caesar, sighing, “it does hurt, Balbus, though I’d not admit that to any Roman of my own class. One thing were it true, but it isn’t. And in Rome an accusation of homosexuality is very damaging. Dignitas suffers.”

  “I think Rome is wrong,” Balbus said gently.

  “So do I, as a matter of fact. But it’s irrelevant. What matters is the mos maiorum, our centuries of traditions and customs. For whatever reason—and I do not know the reason—homosexuality is not approved of. Never was approved of. Why do you think there was such resistance in Rome to things Greek two hundred years ago?”

  “But it must be here in Rome too.”

  ’’ Wagonloads of it, Balbus, and not only among those who don’t belong to the Senate. It was said of Scipio Africanus by Cato the Censor, and it was certainly true of Sulla. Never mind, never mind! If life were easy, how bored we’d be!”

  *

  Senior consul and electoral officer, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer had set up his booth in the lower Forum fairly close to the urban praetor’s tribunal, and there presided to consider the many applications put to him by those desirous of standing for election as praetor or consul. His duties also embraced the other two sets of elections, held later in Quinctilis, which had provided the excuse for Cato to bring the closing date for curule men forward. That way, said Cato, the electoral officer could devote the proper care and consideration to his curule candidates before he needed to cope with the People and the Plebs.

  The man putting himself up as a candidate for any magistracy donned the toga Candida, a garment of blinding whiteness achieved by long days of bleaching in the sun and a final rubbing with chalk. In his train went all his clients and friends, the more important the better. Those of poor memory employed a nomenclator, whose duty it was to whisper the name of every man he met in the candidate’s permanently cocked ear—more awkward these days, as nomenclatores had been officially outlawed.

  The clever candidate mustered his last ounce of patience and prepared himself to listen to anyone and everyone who wanted to talk to him, no matter how long-winded or prolix. If he happened to find a mother and babe, he smiled at the mother and kissed the babe—no votes there, of course, but she might well persuade her husband to vote for him. He laughed loudly when it was called for, he wept copiously at tales of woe, he looked grave and serious when grave and serious subjects were broached; but he never looked bored or uninterested, and he made sure he didn’t say the wrong thing to the wrong person. He shook so many hands that he had to soak his own right hand in cold water every evening. He persuaded his friends famous for their oratory to mount the rostra or Castor’s platform and address the Forum frequenters about what a superb fellow he was, what a pillar of the establishment he was, how many generations of imagines crowded out his atrium—and what a dismal, reprehensible, dishonest, corrupt, unpatriotic, vile, sodomizing, faeces-eating, child-molesting, incestuous, bestial, depraved, fish-fancying, idle, gluttonous, alcoholic lot his opponents were. He promised everything to everybody, no matter how impossible it would prove to deliver those promises.

  Many were the laws Rome had put on her tablets to constrain him: he wasn’t supposed to hire that necessary nomenclator, he couldn’t give gladiatorial shows, he was forbidden to entertain all save his most intimate friends and relatives, he couldn’t hand out presents—and he certainly couldn’t pay out bribe money. So what had happened was that some of the prohibited items (the nomenclator, for example) were winked at, and the ones like gladiatorial shows and banquets had gone by the board, the money they would have cost channeled instead into cash bribery.

  The interesting thing about a Roman was that if he consented to be bought, he stayed bought. There was honor in it, and a man known to have reneged on a bribe was shunned. Hardly anyone below the level of a knight of the Eighteen was impervious to bribes, which provided a handy little sum of much-needed cash. The chief beneficiaries were men of the First Class below the level of the Eighteen senior Centuries, and to a lesser extent the men of the Second Class. The Third, Fourth and Fifth Classes were not worth the expenditure, as they were rarely called upon to vote in the centuriate elections. A man who carried every Century had no real need to bribe the Second Class, so heavily weighted were the Centuries in favor of First Class voters—who were also the richest, as the Centuries were classified on the basis of financial means.

  Tribal elections were more difficult to influence by bribes, but not impossible. No candidate for aedile or tribune of the plebs bothered bribing the members of the four vast urban tribes; he concentrated instead on rural tribes having few members inside Rome at polling time.

  How much a man offered was up to him. It might be a thousand sesterces to each of two thousand voters, or fifty thousand to each of forty voters owning sufficient clout to influence hordes of other men. Clients were obliged to vote for their patrons, but a gift of cash helped there too. A total outlay of two million sesterces was the sum an extremely rich man might contemplate spending, if that; some elections were equally famous for stingy bribers, and spoken of scathingly by those who expected to be bribed.

  The bribes were mostly distributed before polling day, though most candidates who had outlaid vast sums to bribe made sure they had scrutineers as close to the baskets as possible to check what a voter had inscribed on his little tablet. And the danger lay in bribing the wrong person; Cato was famous for rounding up a good number of men to take bribes and then using them to testify in the Bribery Court. This was not dishonorable, as the bribed man would indeed vote the proper way, but then feel no pangs about giving evidence at a prosecution because he had been recruited to do just that before he took the money. For which reason most of the men prosecuted for electoral bribery had succeeded in being elected, from Publius Sulla and Autronius to Murena. Court time was not prone to be wasted on failures.

  Normally there were anything up to ten consular candidates, with six or seven the usual number, and at least half of them from the Famous Families. The electorate usually had a fairly rich and varied choice. But in the year Caesar stood for consul Fortune favored Bibulus and the boni. Most of the praetors in Caesar’s year had been prorogued in their provinces, so were not in Rome to contest an election so heavily weighted in one man’s direction: every political Roman knew Caesar couldn’t lose. And that fact reduced the chances of everyone else. Only one man other than Caesar could become consul, and he would be the junior consul at that. Caesar was certain to come in at the top of the poll, which would make him senior consul. Therefore many men aspiring to be consul decided not to run in Caesar’s year. A defeat was damaging.

  In consequence, the boni decided to stake everything on one man, Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, and went round persuading all the potential candidates of old or noble family not to run against Bibulus. He had to be the junior consul! As junior consul, he would be in a position to make Caesar’s life as senior
consul a very difficult and frustrating one.

  The result was that there were only four candidates, only two of whom came from noble families—Caesar and Bibulus. The two other candidates were both New Men, and of those two, only one stood any chance at all—Lucius Lucceius, a famous court advocate and loyal adherent of Pompey’s. Naturally Lucceius would bribe, having Pompey’s wealth behind him as well as a considerable fortune of his own. The amount of money tendered as bribes gave Lucceius a chance, but it was an outside one only. Bibulus was a Calpurnius, he had the boni behind him, and he too would undoubtedly bribe.

  *

  Caesar crossed the pomerium into Rome as dawn was breaking.

  Accompanied only by Balbus, he walked down the Via Lata to the Hill of the Bankers, entered the city through the Fontinalis Gate, and came down to the Forum with the Lautumiae prison on his right hand and the Basilica Porcia to his left. He caught Metellus Celer neatly, for the curule electoral officer was seated at his booth and staring raptly at an eagle perched on Castor’s roof, oblivious to any traffic from the direction of the prison.

  “An interesting omen,” Caesar said.

  Celer gasped, choked, swept all his papers into a heap and bounded to his feet. “You’re too late, I’m closed!” he cried.

  “Come now, Celer, that unconstitutional you dare not be. I am here to declare my candidacy for the consulship by the Nones of June. Today you are open, the Senate has decreed it. When I arrived before you, you were seated for business. You will therefore accept my candidacy. No impediment exists.”

  Suddenly the lower Forum was crowded; all of Caesar’s clients were there, and one man so important Celer knew he didn’t dare close his booth. Marcus Crassus strode up to Caesar and ranged himself alongside the brilliantly white left shoulder.

  “Is there any trouble, Caesar?” he growled.

  “None that I know of. Well, Quintus Celer?”

  “You haven’t tendered your province’s accounts.”

  “I have, Quintus Celer. They arrived at the Treasury yesterday morning, with instructions to review them immediately. Do you wish to stroll across to Saturn’s with me now and find out if there are any discrepancies?’’

  “I accept your candidacy for the consulship,” Celer said, and leaned forward. “You fool!” he snarled. “You’ve abandoned your triumph, and for what? You’ll have Bibulus to tie you hand and foot, so much I swear! You should have waited until next year.”

  “By next year there wouldn’t be a Rome if Bibulus were let ride rampant. No, that is not the correct phrase. If Bibulus were to do nothing and forbid everything. Yes, that’s better.”

  “He’ll forbid everything with you as his senior!”

  “A flea may try.”

  Caesar turned away, threw an arm about Crassus’s shoulder and walked into the midst of an ecstatic but weeping throng, as upset by the loss of Caesar’s triumph as it was overjoyed at his appearance inside the city.

  For a moment Celer watched this emotional reception, then gestured curtly to his attendants. “This booth is closed,” he said, and got to his feet. “Lictors, the house of Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus—and be quick for once!”

  It being, the Nones and no meeting of the Senate scheduled, Bibulus was at home when Celer arrived.

  “Guess who just declared himself a candidate?” he said through his teeth as he burst into Bibulus’s study.

  The bony, bald-looking face confronting him went even paler, something opinion said would be impossible. “You’re joking!”

  “I am not joking,” Celer said, throwing himself into a chair with a disagreeable glance at the occupant of the important chair, Metellus Scipio. Why did it have to be that gloomy mentula here? “Caesar crossed the pomerium and laid down his imperium.”

  “But he was to triumph!”

  “I told you,” said Metellus Scipio, “that he’d win. And do you know why he wins all the time? Because he doesn’t stop to count the cost. He doesn’t think like us. None of us would have given up a triumph when the consulship is there every year.”

  “The man’s mad” from a scowling Celer.

  “Very mad or very sane, I’m never sure which,” Bibulus said, and clapped his hands. When a servant appeared he issued orders: “Send for Marcus Cato, Gaius Piso and Lucius Ahenobarbus.”

  “A council of war?’’ asked Metellus Scipio, sighing as if at the prospect of another lost cause.

  “Yes, yes! Though I’m warning you, Scipio, not one single word about Caesar’s always winning! We don’t need a prophet of doom in our midst, and when it comes to prophesying doom you’re in Cassandra’s league.”

  “Tiresias, thank you!” said Metellus Scipio stiffly. “I am not a woman!”

  “Well, he was for a while,” giggled Celer. “Blind too! Been seeing any copulating snakes lately, Scipio?”

  *

  By the time Caesar entered the Domus Publica it was after noon. Everything possible had slowed his progress, so many people had flocked to the Forum to detain him, and he had Balbus to think of; Balbus had to be accorded every distinguished attention, introduced to every prominent man Caesar encountered.

  Then it took a little time to install Balbus in one of the guest suites upstairs, and more time to greet his mother, his daughter, the Vestals. But finally not long before dinner he was able to shut the door of his study on the world and commune with himself.

  The triumph was a thing of the past; he wasted no thought whatsoever upon it. More important by far was to decide what to do next—and to divine what the boni would do next. Celer’s swift departure from the Forum had not escaped him, which meant no doubt that the boni were even now engaged upon a council of war.

  A great pity about Celer and Nepos. They had been excellent allies. But why had they gone to the trouble of antagonizing him so mortally? Pompey was their avowed target, nor did they have any real evidence that Caesar once consul intended to be Pompey’s puppet. Admittedly he had always spoken up for Pompey in the House, but they had never been intimate, nor were they related by blood. Pompey hadn’t offered Caesar a legateship while he was conquering the East; no state of amicitia existed between them. Had the Brothers Metelli been obliged to take on all the enemies of the boni as the price of admission to the ranks? Highly unlikely, given the clout the Brothers Metelli owned. No need for them to woo the boni. The boni would have come crawling.

  Most puzzling was that absolutely scurrilous attack of Nepos’s in the House; it indicated colossal rancor, a very personal feud. Over what? Had they loathed him two years ago when they collaborated with him so splendidly? Definitely not. Caesar was no Pompey, he was not subject to the kind of insecurities which led Pompey to fret about whether people esteemed or despised him; his common sense informed him now that two years ago the feud had not existed. Then why had the Brothers Metelli turned on him to rend him? Why? Mucia Tertia? Yes, by all the Gods, Mucia Tertia! What had she said to her uterine brothers to justify her conduct during Pompey’s absence? Yielding her noble body to the likes of Titus Labienus would not have endeared her to the two most influential Caecilii Metelli left alive, yet they had not only forgiven her, they had championed her against Pompey. Had she blamed Caesar, whom she had known since she married Young Marius twenty-six years before? Had she told them Caesar was her true seducer? The rumor had to have started somewhere. What better source than Mucia Tertia?

  Very well then, the Brothers Metelli were now obdurate foes. Bibulus, Cato, Gaius Piso, Ahenobarbus and a multitude of lesser boni like Marcus Favonius and Munatius Rufus would do anything short of murder to bring him down. Which left Cicero. The world was amply provided with men who could never make up their minds, flirted with this group, flattered that group, and ended in having no allies, few friends. Such was Cicero. Whereabouts Cicero stood at the moment was anybody’s guess; in all probability Cicero himself didn’t know. One moment he adored his dearest Pompey, the next moment he hated everything Pompey was or stood for. What chance did that leave Caes
ar, who was friendly with Crassus? Yes, Caesar, abandon all hope of Cicero….

  The sensible thing was to form a political alliance with Lucius Lucceius. Caesar knew him well because they had done a great deal of court duty together, most of it with Caesar on the bench. A brilliant advocate, a splendid orator, and a clever man who deserved to ennoble himself and his family. Lucceius and Pompey could afford to bribe, no doubt would bribe. But would it answer? The more Caesar thought about that, the less confident he felt. If only the Great Man had supporters in the Senate and the Eighteen! The trouble was that he did not, particularly in the Senate, an amazing state of affairs that could be directly attributed to his old contempt for the Law and Rome’s unwritten constitution. He had rubbed the Senate’s nose in its own excrement in order to force it to allow him to run for consul without ever having been a senator. And they hadn’t forgotten, any of the Conscript Fathers who had belonged to the Senate in those days. Days not so distant, really. A mere decade. Pompey’s only loyal senatorial adherents were fellow Picentines like Petreius, Afranius, Gabinius, Lollius, Labienus, Lucceius, Herennius, and they just didn’t matter. They couldn’t summon a backbencher vote among them if the backbencher was not a Picentine. Money could buy some votes, but the logistics of distributing enough of it to enough voters would defeat Pompey and Lucceius if the boni also decided to bribe.

  Therefore the boni would be bribing. Oh yes, definitely. And with Cato condoning the bribery, there was no chance of its being discovered unless Caesar himself adopted Cato’s tactics. Which he wouldn’t do. Not from principles, simply from lack of time and lack of knowledge of whom to approach to act as an informer. To Cato it was a perfected art; he’d been doing it for years. So gird your loins, Caesar, you are going to have Bibulus as your junior colleague, love it or loathe it….

  What else might they do? Manage to deny next year’s consuls access to provinces afterward. They might well succeed. At the moment the two Gauls were the consular provinces, due to unrest in the further province among the Allobroges, the Aedui and the Sequani. The Gauls were usually worked in tandem, with Italian Gaul serving as a recruiting and supply base for Gaul-across-the-Alps, the one governor fighting, the other maintaining strengths. This year’s consuls, Celer and Afranius, had been given the Gauls for next year, Celer to do the fighting across the Alps, Afranius backing him up from this side of the Alps. How easy it would be to prorogue them for a year or two. The pattern had been set already, as most of the present governors of provinces were in their second or even third year of tenure.