“I found it tucked among her children’s clothes in a chest she probably never thought anyone would invade. I confess I wouldn’t have myself, had it not occurred to me that there are any number of little girls in the Subura who would get so much wear out of things Julia has long grown out of. We’ve always kept her unspoiled in that she’s had to make do with old clothes when girls like Junia parade in something new every day, but we’ve never allowed her to look shabby. Anyway, I thought I’d empty the chest and send Cardixa off to the Subura with the contents. After finding that, I left well alone.”
“How much money does she get, Mater?” Caesar asked, picking up Pompey and turning him round between his hands, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth; he was thinking of all those young girls clustered around the stalls in the market, sighing and cooing over Pompey.
“Very little, as we both agreed when she came of an age to need some money in her purse.”
“How much do you think this would cost, Mater?”
“A hundred sesterces at least.”
“Yes, I’d say that was about right. So she saved her precious money to buy this.”
“She must have done.”
“And what do you deduce from it?”
“That she has a crush on Pompeius, like almost every other girl in her circle. I imagine right at this moment there are a dozen girls clustered around a similar likeness of the same person, Julia included, moaning and carrying on, while Servilia tries to sleep and Brutus toils away over the latest epitome.”
“For someone who has never in her entire life been indiscreet, Mater, your knowledge of human behavior is astonishing.”
“Just because I’ve always been too sensible to be silly myself, Caesar, does not mean that I am incapable of detecting silliness in others,” Aurelia said austerely.
“Why are you bothering to show me this?”
“Well,” said Aurelia, sitting down again, “on the whole I’d have to say that Julia is not silly. After all, I am her grandmother! When I found that”—pointing at Pompey—”I started to think about Julia in a way I hadn’t done before. We tend to forget that they’re almost grown up, Caesar, and that’s a fact. Next year at this time Julia will be eighteen, and marrying Brutus. However, the older she gets and the closer that wedding comes, the more misgivings I have about it.”
“Why?”
“She doesn’t love him.”
“Love isn’t a part of the contract, Mater,” Caesar said gently.
“I know that, nor am I prone to be sentimental. I am not being sentimental now. Your knowledge of Julia is superficial because it has to be superficial. You see her often enough, but with you she presents a different face than she does to me. She adores you, she really does. If you asked her to plunge a dagger into her breast, she probably would.”
He shifted uncomfortably. “Mater, truly!”
“No, I mean it. As far as Julia is concerned, if you asked her to do that, she would assume that it was necessary for your future welfare. She’s Iphigenia at Aulis. If her death could make the winds blow and fill the sails of your life, she’d go to it without counting the cost to herself. And such,” Aurelia said deliberately, “is her attitude to marrying Brutus, I am convinced of it. She will do it to please you, and be a perfect wife to him for fifty years if he lives that long. But she won’t ever be happy married to Brutus.”
“Oh, I couldn’t bear that!” he cried, and put the bust down.
“I didn’t think you could.”
“She’s never said a word to me.”
“Nor will she. Brutus is the head of a fabulously rich and ancient family. Marrying him will bring that family into your fold, she knows it well.”
“I’ll talk to her tomorrow,” he said with decision.
“No, Caesar, don’t do that. She’ll only assume you’ve seen her reluctance, and protest that you’re wrong.”
“Then what do I do?”
An expression of feline satisfaction came over Aurelia’s face; she smiled and purred in the back of her throat. “If I were you, my son, I’d invite poor lonely Pompeius Magnus to a nice little family dinner.”
Between the dropped jaw and the smile fighting to close it, Caesar looked as he had when a boy. Then the smile won, turned into a roar of laughter. “Mater, Mater,” he said when he was able, “what would I do without you? Julia and Magnus? Do you think it’s possible? I’ve racked myself hollow trying to find a way to bind him to me, but this is one way never crossed my mind! You’re right, we don’t see them grown up. I thought I did when I came home. But Brutus was there—I just took them for granted.”
“It will work if it’s a love match, but not otherwise,” said Aurelia, “so don’t be hasty and don’t betray by word or look to either of them what hangs upon their meeting.”
“I won’t, of course I won’t. When do you suggest?”
“Wait until the land bill is settled, whichever way it goes. And don’t push him, even after they meet.”
“She’s beautiful, she’s young, she’s a Julia. Magnus will be asking the moment dinner’s over.”
But Aurelia shook her head. “Magnus won’t ask at all.”
“Why not?”
“Something Sulla told me once. That Pompeius was always afraid to ask for the hand of a princess. For that is what Julia is, my son, a princess. The highest born in Rome. A foreign queen would not be her equal in Pompeius’s eyes. So he won’t ask because he is too afraid of being refused. That’s what Sulla said—Pompeius would rather remain a bachelor than risk the injury to his dignitas a refusal would mean. So he’s waiting for someone with a princess for a daughter to ask him. It’s you will have to do the asking, Caesar, not Pompeius. Let him grow very hungry first. He knows she’s engaged to Brutus. We will see what happens when they meet, but don’t allow them to meet too soon.” She rose and plucked the bust of Pompey from the desk. “I’ll put this back.”
“No, put it on a shelf near her bed and do what you intended to do. Give her clothes away,” said Caesar, leaning back and closing his eyes in content.
“She’ll be mortified that I’ve discovered her secret.”
“Not if you scold her for accepting presents from Junia, who has too much money. That way she can continue to gaze on Pompeius Magnus without losing her pride.”
“Go to bed,” said Aurelia at the door.
“I intend to. And thanks to you, I am going to sleep as soundly as a siren-struck sailor.”
“That, Caesar, is carrying alliteration too far.”
*
On the second day of January Caesar presented his land bill to the House for its consideration, and the House shuddered at the sight of almost thirty large book buckets distributed around the senior consul’s feet. What had been the normal length of a bill was now seen to be minute by comparison; the lex Iulia agraria ran to well over a hundred chapters.
As the chamber of the Curia Hostilia was not an acoustically satisfactory place, the senior consul pitched his voice high and proceeded to give the Senate of Rome an admirably concise and yet comprehensive dissection of this massive document bearing his name, and his name alone. A pity Bibulus was uncooperative; otherwise it might have been a lex Iulia Calpurnia agraria.
“My scribes have prepared three hundred copies of the bill; time prohibited more,” he said. “However, there are enough for a copy between every two senators, plus fifty for the People. I will set up a booth outside the Basilica Aemilia with a legal secretary and an assistant in attendance so that those members of the People who wish to peruse it or query it may do so. Attached to each copy is a summary equipped with useful references to pertinent clauses or chapters in case some readers or enquirers are more interested in some provisions than in others.”
“You’ve got to be joking!” sneered Bibulus. “No one will bother reading anything half that long!”
“I sincerely hope everyone reads it,” said Caesar, lifting his brows. “I want criticism, I want helpful suggestions,
I want to know what’s wrong with it.” He looked stern. “Brevity may be the core of wit, but brevity in laws requiring length means bad laws. Every contingency must be examined, explored, explained. Watertight legislation is long legislation. You will see few nice short bills from me, Conscript Fathers. But every bill I intend to present to you will have been personally drafted according to a formula designed to cover every foreseeable possibility.”
He paused to allow comment, but nobody volunteered. “Italia is Rome, make no mistake about that. The public lands of Italia’s cities, towns, municipalities and shires belong to Rome, and thanks to wars and migrations there are many districts up and down this peninsula that have become as underused and underpopulated as any part of modern Greece. Whereas Rome the city has become overpopulated. The grain dole is a burden larger than the Treasury ought to be expected to bear, and in saying this I am not criticizing the law of Marcus Porcius Cato. In my opinion his was an excellent measure. Without it, we would have seen riots and general unrest. But the fact remains that instead of funding an ever-increasing grain dole, we ought to be relieving overpopulation within the city of Rome by offering Rome’s poor more than a chance to join the army.
“We also have some fifty thousand veteran soldiers wandering up and down the country—including inside this city!—without the wherewithal to settle down in middle age and become peaceful, productive citizens able to procreate legitimately and provide Rome with the soldiers of the future, rather than with fatherless brats hanging on the skirts of indigent women. If our conquests have taught us nothing else, they have surely taught us that it is Romans who fight best, Romans who give generals their victories, Romans who can look with equanimity upon the prospect of a siege ten years long, Romans who can pick up after their losses and begin to fight all over again.
“What I propose is a law which will distribute every iugerum of public land in this peninsula, save for the two hundred square miles of the Ager Campanus and the fifty square miles of public land attached to the city of Capua, our main training ground for the legions. It therefore includes the public lands attached to places like Volaterrae and Arretium. When I go to fix my boundary stones along Italia’s traveling stock routes, I want to know that they comprise the bulk of public land left in the peninsula outside of Campania. Why not the Campanian lands too? Simply because they have been under lease for a very long time, and it would be highly repugnant to those who lease them to have to do without them. That of course includes the maltreated knight Publius Servilius, who I hope by now has replanted his vines and applied as much manure as those delicate plants can tolerate.”
Not even that provoked a remark! Because Bibulus’s curule chair was actually a little behind his own, Caesar couldn’t see his face, but found it interesting that he remained silent. Silent too was Cato, back to wearing no tunic beneath his toga since his Ape, Favonius, had entered the House to imitate him. An urban quaestor, the Ape was able to attend every sitting of the Senate.
“Without dispossessing any person at present occupying our ager publicus under the terms of an earlier lex agraria, I have estimated that the available public lands will provide allotments of ten iugera each to perhaps thirty thousand eligible citizens. Which leaves us with the task of finding sufficient land at present privately owned for another fifty thousand beneficiaries. I am counting on accommodating fifty thousand veteran soldiers plus thirty thousand of Rome’s urban poor. Not including however many veterans are inside the city of Rome, thirty thousand urban poor removed to productive allotments in rural areas will provide relief for the Treasury of seven hundred and twenty talents per year of grain dole moneys. Add the twenty thousand-odd veterans in the city, and the relief approximates the additional burden Marcus Porcius Cato’s law put on public funds.
“But even accounting for the purchase of so much privately owned land, the Treasury can supply the finance necessary because of enormously increased revenues from the eastern provinces—even if, for example, the tax-farming contracts were to be reduced by, let us say, a third. I do not expect the twenty thousand talents of outright profit Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus added to the Treasury to stretch to buying land because of Quintus Metellus Nepos’s relaxation of duties and tariffs, a munificent gesture which has deprived Rome of revenue she actually needs badly.”
Did that get a response? No, it didn’t. Nepos himself was still governing Further Spain, though Celer sat among the consulars. Time he took himself to govern his province, Further Gaul.
“When you examine my lex agraria, you will find that it is not arrogant. No pressure of any kind can be exerted upon present owners of land to sell to the State, nor is there a built-in reduction in land prices. Land bought by the State must be paid for at the value put upon it by our esteemed censors Gaius Scribonius Curio and Gaius Cassius Longinus. Existing deeds of ownership will be accepted as completely legal, with no recourse at law to challenge them. In other words, if a man has shifted his boundary stones and no one has yet quarreled with his action, then they define the extent of his property at sale.
“No recipient of a grant of land will be able to sell it or move off it for twenty years.
“And finally, Conscript Fathers, the law proposes that the acquisition and allocation of land reside with a commission of twenty senior knights and senators. If this House gives me a consultum to take to the People, then this House will have the privilege of choosing the twenty knights and senators. If it does not give me a consultum, then the privilege goes to the People. There will also be a committee of five consulars to supervise the work of the commissioners. I, however, have no part in any of it. Neither commission nor committee. There must be no suspicion that Gaius Julius Caesar is out to enrich himself, or become the patron of those the lex Iulia agraria resettles.”
Caesar sighed, smiled, lifted his hands. “Enough for today, honored members of this House. I give you twelve days to read the bill and prepare for debate, which means that the next session to deal with the lex Iulia agraria will occur sixteen days before the Kalends of February. The House will, however, sit again five days from now, which is the seventh day before the Ides of January.” He looked mischievous. “As I would not like to think any of you is overburdened, I have arranged for the delivery of two hundred and fifty copies of my law to the houses of the two hundred and fifty most senior members of this body. Please don’t forget the more junior senators! Those of you who read swiftly, send your copy on when you’ve finished. Otherwise, may I suggest the junior men approach their seniors and ask to share?”
Whereupon he dismissed the meeting and went off in the company of Crassus; passing Pompey, he acknowledged the Great Man with a grave inclination of the head, nothing more.
Cato had more to say as he and Bibulus walked out together than he had during the meeting.
“I intend to read every line of every one of those innumerable scrolls looking for the catches,” he announced, “and I suggest you do the same, Bibulus, even if you do hate reading law. In fact, we must all read.”
“He hasn’t left much room to criticize the actual law if it’s as respectable as he makes out. There won’t be any catches.”
“Are you saying you’re in favor of it?” roared Cato.
“Of course I’m not!” Bibulus snapped. “What I’m saying is that our blocking it will look spiteful rather than constructive.”
Cato looked blank. “Do you care?”
“Not really, but I was hoping for a reworked version of Sulpicius or Rullus—something we could pick at. There’s no point in making ourselves more odious to the People than necessary.”
“He’s too good for us,” said Metellus Scipio gloomily.
“No, he isn’t!” yelled Bibulus. “He won’t win, he won’t!”
*
When the House met five days later the subject bruited was the Asian publicani; this time there were no buckets full of chapters, merely a single scroll Caesar held in his hand.
“This matter has been stalled
for well over a year, during which a group of desperate tax-farming men has been destroying good Roman government in four eastern provinces—Asia, Cilicia, Syria and Bithynia-Pontus,” said Caesar, voice hard. “The sums the censors accepted on behalf of the Treasury have not been met even so. Every day this disgraceful state of affairs continues is one more day during which our friends the socii of the eastern provinces are squeezed remorselessly, one more day during which our friends the socii of the eastern provinces curse the name of Rome. The governors of these provinces spend their time on the one hand placating deputations of irate socii and on the other having to supply lictors and troops to assist the tax-farmers in squeezing.
“We have to cut our losses, Conscript Fathers. That simple. I have here a bill to present to the Popular Assembly asking it to reduce the tax revenues from the eastern provinces by one third. Give me a consultum today. Two thirds of something is infinitely preferable to three thirds of nothing.”
But of course Caesar didn’t get his consultum. Cato talked the meeting out with a discussion of the philosophy of Zeno and the adaptations Roman society had forced upon it.
Shortly after dawn the next day Caesar convoked the Popular Assembly, filled it with Crassus’s knights, and put the matter to the vote.
“For,” he said, “if seventeen months of contiones on this subject are not enough, then seventeen years of contiones will not suffice! Today we vote, and that means that release for the publicani need be no further away than seventeen days from now!”
One look at the faces filling the Well of the Comitia told the boni that opposition would be as perilous as fruitless; when Cato tried to speak he was booed, and when Bibulus tried to speak the fists came up. In one of the quickest votes on record, the Treasury’s revenues from the eastern provinces were reduced by one third, and the crowd of knights cheered Caesar and Marcus Crassus until they were hoarse.
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