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

by Colleen McCullough

  Satisfied, the sacred snake withdrew his head and returned to his rest, snuggled within Bona Dea’s vulva.

  *

  When Asicius’s family and slaves returned from the fields they found Asicius dead, looked out the door to where the naked body of Publius Clodius lay, and fled again.

  Many, many travelers passed along the Via Appia, and many passed during that eighteenth day of January. Eleven of Clodius’s slaves were dead, eleven more moaned in agony and died slowly; no one stopped to succor them. When Schola, Pomponius and the freedman Gaius Clodius came back with several residents of Bovillae and a cart, they looked down on Clodius and wept.

  “We’re dead men too,” said Schola after they had found the body of the innkeeper. “Milo will not rest until there are no witnesses left alive.”

  “Then we’re not staying here!” said the owner of the cart, turned the vehicle and clattered off.

  Moments later they were all gone. Clodius still lay in the road, his glazed eyes fixed on the shrine of Bona Dea, a lake of congealing blood and a heap of spilled guts around him.

  Not until the middle of the afternoon did anyone pay the slaughter more than a horrified look before hurrying on. But then came an ambling litter, in it the very old Roman senator Sextus Teidius. Displeased when it halted amid a hubbub among his bearers, he poked his head between the curtains and looked straight at the face of Publius Clodius. Out he scrambled, his crutch propped beneath his arm; for Sextus Teidius had but one leg, having lost the other fighting in the army of Sulla against King Mithridates.

  “Put the poor fellow in my litter and run with him to his house in Rome as quickly as you can,” he instructed his bearers, then beckoned to his manservant. “Xenophon, help me walk back to Bovillae. They must know of it! Now I understand why they acted so oddly when we passed through.”

  And so, about an hour before nightfall, Sextus Teidius’s blown bearers brought his litter through the Capena Gate and up the slope of the Clivus Palatinus to where Clodius’s new house stood, looking across the Vallis Murcia and the Circus Maximus to the Tiber and the Janiculum beyond.

  Fulvia came running, hair streaming behind her, too shocked to scream or weep; she parted the curtains of the litter and looked down on the ruins of Publius Clodius, his bowels thrust roughly back inside the great gash in his belly, his skin as white as Parian marble, no clothes to dignify his death, his penis on full display. “Clodius! Clodius!” she shrieked, went on shrieking.

  They put him on a makeshift bier in the peristyle garden without covering his nakedness, while the Clodius Club assembled. Curio, Antony, Plancus Bursa, Pompeius Rufus, Decimus Brutus, Poplicola and Sextus Cloelius.

  “Milo,” growled Mark Antony.

  “We don’t know that,” said Curio, who stood with one hand on Fulvia’s hunched shoulder as she sat on a bench and stared at Clodius without moving.

  “We do know that!” said a new voice.

  Titus Pomponius Atticus went straight to Fulvia and sank down on the bench beside her. “My poor girl,” he said tenderly. “I’ve sent for your I mother; she’ll be here soon.”

  “How do you know?” asked Plancus Bursa, looking wary.

  “From my cousin Pomponius, who was with Clodius today,” said Atticus. “Thirty-four of them encountered Milo and a bodyguard which outnumbered them five to one on the Via Appia.” He indicated Clodius’s body with one hand. “This is the result, though my cousin didn’t see it. Just Birria throwing a spear. That’s the shoulder wound, which wouldn’t have killed him. When Clodius insisted that Pomponius, Schola and Gaius Clodius go to Bovillae for help, he was resting safely in a tavern. By the time they got back—Bovillae was behaving very strangely, wanted nothing to do with it—it was too late. Clodius was dead in the road, the innkeeper dead in his tavern. They panicked. Inexcusable, but that’s what happened. I don’t know where the other two are, but my cousin Pomponius got as far as Aricia, then left them to come to me. They all believe that Milo will have them killed too, of course.”

  “Didn’t anyone see it?” demanded Antony, wiping his eyes. “Oh, a dozen times a month I could have murdered Clodius myself, but I loved him!”

  “It doesn’t seem that anyone saw it,” said Atticus. “It happened on that deserted stretch of road alongside Sertius Callus’s horse farm.” He took Fulvia’s nerveless hand and began to chafe it gently. “Dear girl, it’s so cold out here. Come inside and wait for Mama.”

  “I have to stay with Clodius,” she whispered. “He’s dead, Atticus! How can that be?” She began to rock. “He’s dead! How can that be? How am I going to tell the children?”

  Atticus’s fine dark eyes met Curio’s above her head. “Let your mama deal with things, Fulvia. Come inside.”

  Curio took her, and she went without resisting. Fulvia, who ran madly toward everything, who screamed in the Forum like a man, who fought strenuously for everything she believed in! Fulvia, whom no one had ever before seen go tamely anywhere. In the doorway her knees buckled; Atticus moved swiftly to help Curio, then together they bore her into the house.

  Sextus Cloelius, who ran Clodius’s street gangs these days after serving a stern apprenticeship under Decimus Brutus, was not a nobleman. Though the others knew him, he didn’t attend meetings of the Clodius Club. Now, perhaps because the others were shocked into inertia, he took command.

  “I suggest we carry Clodius’s body just as it is down to the Forum and put it on the rostra,” Cloelius said harshly. “All of Rome should see exactly what Milo did to a man who outshone him the way the sun does the moon.”

  “But it’s dark!” said Poplicola foolishly.

  “Not in the Forum. The word’s spreading, the torches are lit, Clodius’s people are gathering. And I say they’re entitled to see what Milo did to their champion!”

  “You’re right,” said Antony suddenly, and threw off his toga. “Come on, two of you pick up the foot of the bier. I’ll carry the head.”

  Decimus Brutus was weeping inconsolably, so Poplicola and Pompeius Rufus abandoned their togas to obey Antony.

  “What’s the matter with you, Bursa?” asked Antony when the bier tipped dangerously. “Can’t you see Poplicola’s too small to match Rufus? Take his place, man!”

  Plancus Bursa cleared his throat. “Well, actually I was going to return home. The wife’s in a terrible state.”

  Antony frowned, then peeled his lips back from his small and perfect teeth. “What’s a wife when Clodius is dead? Under the cat’s foot, Bursa? Take Poplicola’s place or I’ll turn you into a replica of Clodius!”

  Bursa did as he was told.

  The word was indeed spreading; outside in the lane a small crowd had gathered, armed with spitting torches. When the massive figure of Antony appeared holding both poles projecting from the front of the bier, a murmur went up which changed to a sighing moan as the crowd saw Clodius.

  “See him?” shouted Cloelius. “See what Milo did?”

  A growl began, grew as the three members of the Clodius Club carried their burden to the Clivus Victoriae and paused at the top of the Vestal Steps. A natural athlete, Antony simply turned round, lifted his end of the bier high above his head, and went down the steps backward without looking or stumbling. Below in the Forum a sea of torches waited, men and women moaning and weeping as the magnificent Antony, red-brown curls alive in the flickering light, bore Clodius aloft until he reached the bottom of the steps.

  Across the lower Forum to the well of the Comitia and the rostra grafted into its side; there Antony, Bursa and Pompeius Rufus set the bier’s short legs upon the surface of the rostra.

  Cloelius had stopped in the forefront of the crowd, and now mounted the rostra with his arm thrown about the shoulders of a very old, small man who wept desolately.

  “You all know who this is, don’t you?” Cloelius demanded in a great voice. “You all know Lucius Decumius! Publius Clodius’s loyalest follower, his friend for years, his helper, his conduit to every man who goes, goo
d citizen that he is, to serve in his crossroads college!” Cloelius put his hand beneath Lucius Decumius’s chin, lifted the seamed face so that the light struck his rivers of tears to silver-gilt. “See how Lucius Decumius mourns?”

  He turned to point a finger at the bulk of the Curia Hostilia, the Senate House, on whose steps a small group of senators had assembled: Cicero, smiling in absolute joy; Cato, Bibulus and Ahenobarbus, sober but not grief stricken; Manlius Torquatus, Lucius Caesar, the stroke-crippled Lucius Cotta, looking troubled.

  “See them?” shrieked Cloelius. “See the traitors to Rome and to you? Look at the great Marcus Tullius Cicero, smiling! Well, we all know that he had nothing to lose by Milo’s doing murder!” He swung aside for a moment; when he turned back, Cicero had gone. “Oh, thinks he might be next, does he? No man deserves death more than the great Cicero who executed Roman citizens without trial and was sent into exile for it by this poor, mangled man I show you here tonight! Everything that Publius Clodius did or tried to do, the Senate opposed! Who do they think they are, the men who people that rotting body? Our betters, that’s who they think they are! Better than me! Better than Lucius Decumius! Better even than Publius Clodius, who was one of them!”

  The crowd was beginning to eddy, the noise of hate rising inexorably as Cloelius worked on its grief and shock, its dreadful sense of loss.

  “He gave you free grain!” Cloelius screamed. “He gave you back your right to congregate in your colleges, the right that man”—pointing at Lucius Caesar—”stripped from you! He gave you friendship, employment, brilliant games!” He pretended to peer into the sea of faces. “There are many freedmen here to mourn, and what a friend he was to all of you! He gave you seats at the games when all other men forbade that, and he was about to give you true Roman citizenship, the right to belong to one of those thirty-one exclusive rural tribes!”

  Cloelius paused, drew a sobbing breath, wiped the sweat from his brow. “But they,” he cried, sweeping the sweat-smeared hand toward the Curia Hostilia steps, “didn’t want that! They knew it meant their days of glory were over! And they conspired to murder your beloved Publius Clodius! So fearless, so determined, that nothing short of death would have stopped him! They knew it. They took it into account. And then they plotted to murder him. Not merely that ex-gladiator Milo—all of them were in on it! All of them killed Publius Clodius! Milo was just their tool! And I say there is only one way to deal with them! Show them how much we care! Show them that we will kill them all before we’re done!” He looked again at the Senate steps, recoiled in mock horror. “See that? See it? They’re gone! Not one of them has the backbone to face you! But will that stop us? Will it?”

  The eddies were swirling, the torches spinning wildly. And the crowd with one voice shouted, “NO!”

  Poplicola was alongside Cloelius, but Antony, Bursa, Pompeius Rufus and Decimus Brutus hung back, uneasy; two were tribunes of the plebs, one recently admitted to the Senate, and one, Antony, not yet a senator. What Cloelius was saying affected them as much as it did the group who had fled from the Senate steps, but there was no stopping Cloelius now, nor any escape.

  “Then let’s show them what we mean to do to them!” Cloelius screamed. “Let’s put Publius Clodius in the Senate House, and dare the rest of them to remove him!”

  A convulsive movement thrust the front ranks onto the top of the rostra; Clodius’s bier was hoisted shoulder-high and carried on a wave of arms up the Senate steps to its ponderous bronze pair of doors, unassailably strong. In one moment they were gone, torn from their enormous hinges; the body of Publius Clodius disappeared inside. Came the sounds of things being ripped apart, splintered, smashed, reduced to fragments.

  Bursa had somehow managed to get away; Antony, Decimus Brutus and Pompeius Rufus stood watching in horror as Cloelius fought his way up the Senate steps to the portico.

  In the midst of which Antony’s eyes found little old Lucius Decumius, still on the rostra, still mourning. He knew him, of course, from Caesar’s days in the Subura, and though Antony was not a merciful man, he always had a soft spot for people he liked. No one else was interested in Lucius Decumius, so he moved to the old man’s side and cuddled him.

  “Where are your sons, Decumius?” he asked.

  “Don’t know, don’t care.”

  “Time an old codger like you was home in bed.”

  “Don’t want to go to bed.” The tear-drenched eyes looked up into Antony’s face and recognized him. “Oh, Marcus Antonius, they’re all gone!” he cried. “She broke their hearts—she broke mine—they’re all gone!”

  “Who broke your heart, Decumius?”

  “Little Julia. Knew her as a baby. Knew Caesar as a baby. Knew Aurelia since she was eighteen years old. Don’t want to feel no more, Marcus Antonius!”

  “Caesar’s still with us, Decumius.”

  “Won’t ever see him again. Caesar said to me, look after Clodius. He said, make sure while I’m away that Clodius don’t come to no harm. But I couldn’t do it. No one could, with Clodius.”

  The crowd emitted a long cry; Antony glanced toward the Curia Hostilia and stiffened. It was so old it had no windows, but high in its side where the beautiful mural adorned it were big grilles to let in air; they glowed now with a red, pulsating light and trickled smoke.

  “Jupiter!” roared Antony to Decimus Brutus and Pompeius Rufus. “They’ve set the place on fire!”

  Lucius Decumius twisted like an eel and was away; aghast, Antony watched him struggle, old man that he was, through the hordes now retreating down the Senate steps and away from the conflagration. Flames were belching out of the doorway, but Lucius Decumius never paused. His figure showed black against the fire, then disappeared inside.

  Sated and exhausted, the crowd went home. Antony and Decimus Brutus walked together to the top of the Vestal Steps and stood to watch as the fire inside the Curia Hostilia consumed Publius Clodius. Beyond it on the Argiletum stood the offices of the Senate, wherein lay the precious records of meetings, the consulta which were the senatorial decrees, the fasti which listed all the magistrates who had ever been in office. Beyond it on the Clivus Argentarius stood the Basilica Porcia, headquarters of the tribunes of the plebs and offices for brokers and bankers, again stuffed with irreplaceable records of all descriptions. Cato the Censor had built it, the first such structure to adorn the Forum, and though it was small, dingy and long eclipsed by finer edifices, it was a part of the mos maiorum. Opposite the Curia Hostilia on the other corner of the Argiletum stood the exquisite Basilica Aemilia, still being restored to absolute magnificence by Lucius Aemilius Paullus.

  But they all went up in flames as Antony and Decimus Brutus watched.

  “I loved Clodius, but he wasn’t good for Rome,” said Mark Antony, utterly depressed.

  “And I! For a long time I truly thought that Clodius might actually make the place work better,” said Decimus Brutus. “But he didn’t know when to stop. His freedmen scheme killed him.”

  “I suppose,” said Antony, turning away at last, “that things will quieten down now. I might be elected a quaestor yet.”

  “And I’m going to Caesar in Gaul. I’ll see you there.”

  “Huh!” grumped Antony. “I’ll probably draw the lot for Sardinia and Corsica.”

  “Oh no,” said Decimus Brutus, grinning. “It’s Gaul for both of us. Caesar’s asked for you, Antonius. Told me in his letter.”

  Which sent Antony home feeling better.

  *

  Other things had happened during that awful night. Some in the crowd, gathered by Plancus Bursa, had gone out to the temple of Venus Libitina beyond the Servian Walls on the Campus Esquilinus, and there removed the fasces laid on their couches because there were no men in office to wield them. They then trudged all the way from the south side of the city to the Campus Martius, and there stood outside Pompey’s villa demanding that he assume the fasces and the dictatorship. But the place was dark, no one answered; Pompey had gone to his
villa in Etruria. Footsore, they plodded to the houses of Plautius and Metellus Scipio atop the Palatine and begged them to take the fasces. The doors were bolted, no one answered. Bursa had abandoned them after the fruitless mission to Pompey’s villa, gone home anguished and afraid; at dawn the weary, leaderless group deposited the bundles of rods back in Venus Libitina.

  No one wanted to govern Rome—that was the opinion of every man and woman who went the next day to the Forum to see the smoking ruins of so much precious history. Fulvia’s undertakers were there, gloved, booted and masked, poking through the still-hot embers to find little bits of Publius Clodius. Not much, just enough to cause a rattle inside the priceless jeweled jar Fulvia had provided. Clodius must have a funeral, though it would not be at the expense of the State, and Fulvia, crushed, had yielded to her mother’s command that the Forum be avoided.

  Cato and Bibulus stared, appalled.

  “Oh, Bibulus, Cato the Censor’s basilica is gone, and I do not have the money to rebuild it!” wept Cato, looking at the crumbling, blackened walls. The column which had so inconvenienced the tribunes of the plebs stuck up through the charred beams of the collapsed roof like the stump of a rotten tooth.

  “We can make a start with Porcia’s dowry,” said Bibulus. “I can manage without it, and so can Porcia. Besides, Brutus will be home any day. We’ll get a big donation from him too.”

  “We’ve lost all the Senate records!” Cato said through his sobs. “There are not even those to tell future Romans what Cato the Censor said.”

  “It’s a disaster, yes, Cato, but at least it means we don’t have to worry about the freedmen.”

  Which was the chief sentiment among Rome’s senators.

  Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, who was married to Cato’s sister and had given two of his own sisters to Bibulus as wives, hurried up. A short, squat man with not one hair on his head, Ahenobarbus had neither Cato’s strength of principle nor Bibulus’s sharpness of mind, but he was bullishly stubborn and absolutely faithful to the boni, the Good Men of the Senate’s ultra-conservative faction.