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

by Colleen McCullough

  “Oh, what a relief!” said Crassus, actually beaming.

  “I wish they were all that easy,” said Caesar, sighing. “If I could act as quickly with the lex agraria it would be over before the boni could organize themselves. Yours was the only one I didn’t need to call contiones about. The silly boni didn’t understand that I’d just—do it!”

  “One thing puzzles me, Caesar.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, the tribunes of the plebs have been in office for a month, yet you haven’t used Vatinius at all. Now here you are promulgating your own laws. I know Vatinius. A good client I’m sure, but you’ll be charged for every service.”

  “We’ll be charged, Marcus,” Caesar said gently.

  “The whole Forum is confused. A month of tribunes of the plebs without a single law or fuss.”

  “I have plenty of work for Vatinius and Alfius, but not yet. I’m the real lawyer, Marcus, and I love it. Legislating consuls are rare. Why should I let Cicero have all the glory? No, I’ll wait until I’m having real trouble with the lex agraria, then I’ll unleash Vatinius and Alfius. Just to confuse the issue.”

  “Do I really have to read all that paper?’’ asked Crassus.

  “It would be good because you might have some bright ideas. There’s nothing wrong with it from your point of view, of course.”

  “You can’t trick me, Gaius. There is just no way in the world that you can settle eighty thousand people on ten iugera each without using both the Ager Campanus and the Capuan land.”

  “I never thought I would trick you. But I have no intention of pulling the curtain away from that beast’s cage yet.”

  “Then I’m glad I got out of latifundia farming.”

  “Why did you?”

  ‘ Too much trouble, not enough profit. All those iugera with some sheep and some shepherds, a lot of strife chaining up the work gangs—the men in it are fribbles, Gaius. Look at Atticus. Much and all as I detest the man, he’s too clever to graze half a million iugera in Italy. They like to say they graze half a million iugera, and that’s about what it amounts to. Lucullus is a perfect example. More money than sense. Or taste, though he’d dispute it. You’ll get no opposition from me, nor from the knights. Grazing the public land under lease from the State is a recreation for senators, not a business for knights. It might give a senator his million-sesterces census, but what are a million sesterces, Caesar? A piddling forty talents! I can make that in a day on”—he grinned, shrugged—”best not say. You might tell the censors.”

  Caesar picked up the folds of his toga and started to run across the lower Forum in the direction of the Velabrum. “Gaius Curio! Gaius Cassius! Don’t go home, go to your censors’ booth! I have something to report!”

  Under the fascinated gaze of several hundred knights and Forum frequenters, Crassus gathered the folds of his toga about him and set off in pursuit, shouting: “Don’t! Don’t!”

  Then Caesar stopped, let Crassus catch up, and the two of them howled with laughter before setting off in the direction of the Domus Publica. How extraordinary! Two of the most famous men in Rome running all over the place? And the moon wasn’t even waxing, let alone full!

  *

  All through January the duel between Caesar and the boni over the land bill continued unabated. At every meeting set aside in the Senate to discuss it, Cato filibustered. Interested to see whether the technique could still work at all, Caesar finally had his lictors haul Cato out of his place and march him off to the Lautumiae, the boni following in his wake applauding, Cato with his head up and the look of a martyr on his horselike face. No, it wasn’t going to work. Caesar called off his lictors, Cato returned to his place, and the filibuster went on.

  Nothing else for it than to take the matter to the People without that elusive senatorial decree. He would now have to run it in contio right through the month of February, when Bibulus had the fasces and could more legally oppose the consul without them. So would the vote be in February, or March? No one really knew.

  “If you’re so against the law, Marcus Bibulus,” cried Caesar at that first contio in the Popular Assembly, “then tell me why! It isn’t enough to stand there baying that you’ll oppose it, you must tell this lawful assemblage of Roman People what is wrong with it! Here am I offering a chance to people without a chance, doing so without bankrupting the State and without cheating or coercing those who already own land! Yet all you can do is say you oppose, you oppose, you oppose! Tell us why!”

  “I oppose because you’re promulgating it, Caesar, for no other reason! Whatever you do is cursed, unholy, evil!”

  “You’re speaking in riddles, Marcus Bibulus! Be specific, not emotional; tell us why you oppose this absolutely necessary piece of legislation! Give us your criticisms, please!”

  “I have no criticisms to make, yet still I oppose!”

  Considering that several thousand men had packed into the Comitia well, noise from the crowd was minimal. There were new faces in it, it was not composed entirely of knights, nor of young men belonging to Clodius, nor of professional Forum frequenters; Pompey was bringing his veterans into Rome in preparation for a vote or a fight, no one knew which. These were hand-picked men, evenly numbered across the thirty-one rural tribes and therefore immensely valuable as voters. But also handy in a fight.

  Caesar turned to Bibulus and held out his hands, pleading. “Marcus Bibulus, why do you obstruct a very good and very much needed law? Can’t you find it in yourself to help the People rather than hinder them? Can’t you see from all these men’s faces that this isn’t a law the People will refuse? It’s a law that the whole of Rome wants! Are you going to punish Rome because you don’t like me, one single man named Gaius Julius Caesar? Is that worthy of a consul? Is that worthy of a Calpurnius Bibulus?”

  “Yes, it’s worthy of a Calpurnius Bibulus!” the junior consul cried from the rostra. “I am an augur, I know evil when I see it! You are evil, and everything you do is evil! No good can come of any law you pass! For that reason, I hereby declare that every comitial day for the rest of this year is feriae, a holiday, and that therefore no meeting of People or Plebs can be held for the rest of the year!” He drew himself up onto his toes, fists clenched by his sides, the massive pleats of toga upon his left arm beginning to unravel because his elbow was not crooked. “I do this because I know I am right to take recourse in religious prohibitions! For I tell you now, Gaius Julius Caesar, that I don’t care if every single benighted soul in the whole of Italia wants this law! They will not get it in my year as consul!”

  The hatred was so palpable that those not politically attached to either of the consuls shivered, furtively tucked thumb under middle and ring finger to let index and little fingers stick up in two horns—the sign to ward off the Evil Eye.

  “Rub around him like servile animals!” Bibulus screamed to the crowd. “Kiss him, pollute him, offer yourselves to him! If that’s how much you want this law, then go ahead and do it! But you will not get it in my year as consul! Never, never, never!”

  The boos began, jeers, shouts, curses, catcalls, a rising wave of vocal violence so enormous and terrifying that Bibulus pulled what he could of his toga onto his left arm, turned and left the rostra. Though only far enough away to be safe; he and his lictors stood on the Curia Hostilia steps to listen.

  Then magically the abuse changed to cheers which could be heard as far away as the Forum Holitorium; Caesar produced Pompey the Great and led him to the front of the rostra.

  The Great Man was angry, and anger lent him words as well as power delivering them. What he said didn’t please Bibulus, nor Cato, now standing with him.

  “Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, will you lend me your support against the opponents of this law?” cried Caesar.

  “Let any man dare draw his sword against your law, Gaius Julius Caesar, and I will take up my shield!” Pompey bellowed.

  Then Crassus was there on the rostra too. “I, Marcus Licinius Crassus, declare tha
t this is the best land law Rome has ever seen!” he shouted. “To those of you assembled here who might be concerned over your property, I give you my word that no man’s property is in danger, and that all men interested can expect to see a profit!”

  Shaken, Cato turned to Bibulus. “Ye gods, Marcus Bibulus, do you see what I see?” he breathed.

  “The three of them together!”

  “It isn’t Caesar at all, it’s Pompeius! We’ve been going for the wrong man!”

  “No, Cato, not that. Caesar is the personification of evil. But I do see what you see. Pompeius is the prime mover. Of course he is! What does Caesar stand to gain except money? He’s working for Pompeius, he’s been working for Pompeius all along. Crassus is in it too. The three of them, with Pompeius the prime mover. Well, it’s his veterans stand to benefit, we knew that. But Caesar threw dust in our eyes with his urban poor—shades of the Gracchi and Sulpicius!”

  The cheering was deafening; Bibulus drew Cato away, walked down the Curia Hostilia steps and into the Argiletum.

  “We change our tactics a little, Cato,” he said as distance made it easier to hear. “From now on we aim first for Pompeius.”

  “He’s easier to break than Caesar,” said Cato between his teeth.

  “Anyone is easier to break than Caesar. But don’t worry, Cato. If we break Pompeius, we break up the coalition. Once Caesar has to fight alone, we’ll get him too.”

  “That was a clever trick, to declare the rest of the year’s comitial days feriae, Marcus Bibulus.”

  “I borrowed it from Sulla. But I intend to go a great deal further than Sulla, I assure you. If I can’t stop their passing laws, I can render those laws illegal,” said Bibulus.

  *

  “I begin to think Bibulus a little demented,” said Caesar to Servilia later that day. “This sudden talk of evil is quite hair-raising. Hatred is one thing, but this is something more. There’s no reason in it, no logic.” The pale eyes looked washed out: Sulla’s eyes. “The People felt it too, and they didn’t like it. Political smears are one thing, Servilia, we all have to cope with them. But the sort of things Bibulus came out with today put the differences between us on an inhuman plane. As if we were two forces, I for evil, he for good. Exactly how it came out that way is a puzzle to me, except that perhaps total lack of reason and logic must appear to the onlooker as a manifestation of good. Men assume evil needs to be reasonable, logical. So without realizing what he did, I believe Bibulus put me at a disadvantage. The fanatic must be a force for good; the thinking man, being detached, seems evil by comparison. Is this all just too preposterous?”

  “No,” she said, standing over him as he lay upon the bed, her hands moving strongly and rhythmically over his back. “I do see what you mean, Caesar. Emotion is very powerful, and it lacks all logic. As if it existed in a separate compartment from reason. Bibulus wouldn’t bend when by all the rules of conduct he should have been embarrassed, disadvantaged, humiliated, forced to bend. He couldn’t tell anyone there why he opposed your bill. Yet he persisted in opposing it, and with such zeal, such strength! I think things are going to get worse for you.”

  “Thank you for that,” he said, turning his head to look at her, and smiling.

  “You’ll get no comfort from me if truth gets in the way.” She ceased, sat down on the edge of the bed until he moved over and made room for her to lie down beside him. Then she said, “Caesar, I realize that this land bill is partly to gratify our dear Pompeius—even a blind man can see that. But today when the three of you were standing side by side, it looked like much more than a disinterested attempt to solve one of Rome’s most persistent dilemmas—what to do with discharged veteran troops.”

  He lifted his head. “You were there,” he said.

  “I was. I have a very nice hiding place between the Curia Hostilia and the Basilica Porcia, so I don’t emulate Fulvia.”

  “What did you think was going on, then? Among the three of us, I mean.”

  Her chin felt a trifle hairy; she must begin to pluck it. That resolution tucked away, she turned her attention to Caesar’s question. “Perhaps when you produced Pompeius it wasn’t anything more than a shrewd political move. But Crassus made me stand up straight, I assure you. It reminded me of when he and Pompeius were consuls together, except that they arranged themselves one on either side of you. Without glaring at each other, without a flicker of discomfort. The three of you looked like three pieces of the same mountain. Very impressive! The crowd promptly forgot Bibulus, and that was a good thing. I confess I wondered. Caesar, you haven’t made a pact with Pompeius Magnus, have you?”

  “Definitely not,” he said firmly. “My pact is with Crassus and a cohort of bankers. But Magnus isn’t a fool, even you admit that. He needs me to get land for his veterans and ratify his settlement of the East. On the other hand, my chief concern is to sort out the financial shambles his conquest of the East has brought to pass. In many ways Magnus has hindered Rome, not helped her. Everyone is spending too much and granting too many concessions to the voters. My policy for this year, Servilia, is to get enough poor out of Rome and the grain dole line to ease the Treasury’s grain burden, and put an end to the impasse over the tax-farming contracts. Both purely fiscal, I assure you. I also intend to go a lot further than Sulla in making it difficult for governors to run their provinces like private domains belonging to them rather than to Rome. All of which should make me a hero to the knights.”

  She was somewhat mollified, for that answer made sense. Yet as Servilia walked home she was conscious still of unease. He was crafty, Caesar. And ruthless. If he thought it politic, he would lie to her. He was probably the most brilliant man Rome had ever produced; she had watched him over the months when he had drafted his lex agraria, and couldn’t believe the clarity of his perception. He had installed a hundred scribes upstairs in the Domus Publica, kept them toiling to make copies of what he dictated without faltering to a room full of them scribbling onto wax tablets. A law weighing a talent, not half a pound. So organized, so decisive.

  Well, she loved him. Even the hideous insult of his rejection had not kept her away. Was there anything could? It was therefore necessary that she think him more brilliant, more gifted, more capable than any other man Rome had produced; to think that was to salve her pride. She, a Servilia Caepionis, to come crawling back to a man who wasn’t the best man Rome had ever produced? Impossible! No, a Caesar wouldn’t ally himself with an upstart Pompeius from Picenum! Particularly when Caesar’s daughter was betrothed to the son of a man Pompeius had murdered.

  Brutus was waiting for her.

  As she wasn’t in a mood for dealing with her son, formerly she would have dismissed him curtly. These days she bore him with more patience, not because Caesar had told her she was too hard on him, but because Caesar’s rejection of her had changed the situation in subtle ways. For once her reason (evil?) had not been able to dominate her emotions (good?), and when she had returned to her house from that awful interview she had let grief and rage and pain pour out of her. The household had been shaken to its bowels, servants fled, Brutus shut in his rooms. Listening. Then she had stormed into Brutus’s study and told him what she thought of Gaius Julius Caesar, who wouldn’t marry her because she had been an unfaithful wife.

  “Unfaithful!” she screamed, hair torn out in clumps, face and chest above her gown scratched to ribbons from those terrible nails. “Unfaithful! With him, only with him! But that isn’t good enough for a Julius Caesar, whose wife must be above suspicion! Do you believe that? I am not good enough!”

  The outburst had been a mistake, it didn’t take her long to discover that. For one thing, it put Brutus’s betrothal to Julia on a firmer footing, no danger now that society would frown at the union of the betrothed couple’s parents—a technical incest for all that no close blood links were involved. Rome’s laws were vague about the degree of consanguinity permissible to a married pair, and were—as so often—more a matter of the mos maior
um than a specific law on the tablets. Therefore a sister might not marry a brother. But when it came to a child marrying an aunt or uncle, only custom and tradition and social disapproval prevented it. First cousins married all the time. Thus no one could have legally or religiously condemned the marriage of Caesar and Servilia on the one hand and of Brutus and Julia on the other. But no doubt whatsoever that it would have been frowned upon! And Brutus was his mother’s son. He liked society to approve of what he did. An unofficial union of his mother and Julia’s father did not carry nearly the same degree of odium; Romans were pragmatic about such things because they happened.

  The outburst had also made Brutus look at his mother as an ordinary woman rather than a personification of power. And implanted a tiny nucleus of contempt for her. He wasn’t shriven of his fear, but he could bear it with more equanimity.

  So now she smiled at him, sat down and prepared to chat. Oh, if only his skin would clear up a little! The scars beneath that unsightly stubble must be frightful, and they at least would never go away even if the pustules eventually did.

  “What is it, Brutus?” she asked nicely.

  “Would you have any objection to my asking Caesar if Julia and I could marry next month?’’

  She blinked. “What’s brought this on?”

  “Nothing, except that we’ve been engaged for so many years, and Julia is seventeen now. Lots of girls marry at seventeen.”

  “That’s true. Cicero let Tullia marry at sixteen—not that he’s any great example. However, seventeen is acceptable to true members of the nobility. Neither of you has wavered.” She smiled and blew him a kiss. “Why not?”

  The old dominance asserted itself. “Would you prefer to ask, Mama, or ought it be me?’’

  “You, definitely,” she said. “How delightful! A wedding next month. Who knows? Caesar and I might be grandparents soon.”

  Off went Brutus to see his Julia.

  “I asked my mother if she would object to us marrying next month,” he said, having kissed Julia tenderly and ushered her to a couch where they could sit side by side. “She thinks it will be delightful. So I’m going to ask your father at the first chance.”