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

by Colleen McCullough

  “He then decided, having encountered the might of the Germani in person,” Curio went on, “to seek treaties of friendship for Rome among the Celtic and Belgic peoples of Gallia Comata, and it was for that reason that he entered their lands, not to make war.”

  “Oh, Curio,” cried Marcus Marcellus, “I never thought to see the son of your father smear himself with Gaius Caesar’s shit and lick himself clean! Gerrae! Nonsense! A man wanting to make treaties doesn’t advance at the head of an army, and that’s what Caesar did!”

  “Order,” rumbled Paullus.

  Curio shook his head as if to deplore Marcus Marcellus’s stupidity. “He advanced with an army because he’s a prudent man, Marcus Marcellus, not a fool like you. No Roman pilum was thrown in an unprovoked act of aggression, nor any tribe’s land laid waste. He concluded treaties of friendship, legally binding and tangible treaties, all of which are nailed to the walls of Jupiter Feretrius—go look at them, if you doubt me! It was only when those treaties were broken by the Gallic use of force that a Roman pilum was thrown, a Roman sword drawn. Read Gaius Caesar’s seven Commentaries—you can buy them at any bookshop! For it doesn’t seem as if you ever listened to them when they were sent to this august body in the form of official dispatches.”

  “You’re not worthy to call yourself a Scribonius Curio!” said Cato bitterly. “Traitor!”

  “I’m worthy enough, Marcus Cato, to want to see both sides of this business aired!” snapped Curio, frowning. “I didn’t veto for any other reason than that it became horribly clear to me that the junior consul and the rest of the boni will suffer no defense of a man who isn’t here to defend himself! I do not like the idea of punishing a man without permitting a defense. And it seems to me a worthy thing for a tribune of the plebs to see that justice is done. I repeat, Gaius Caesar was not the aggressor in Gaul of the Long-hairs.

  “As to those allegations that he recruited legions without the authority to do so, I would remind you that you yourselves sanctioned the recruitment of every one of those legions—and agreed to pay them!— as the seriousness of the situation in Gaul became steadily more apparent.”

  “After the fact!” shouted Ahenobarbus. “After the fact! And that at law does not constitute authorization!”

  “I beg to disagree, Lucius Domitius. What about the many thanksgivings this House voted Caesar? And did the Treasury ever complain that the riches Gaius Caesar poured into it were riches Rome neither sanctioned, wanted, or needed? Governments never have enough money, because governments don’t earn money—all they do is spend it.”

  Curio swung to look directly at Brutus, who visibly shrank. “I don’t see any evidence that the boni find the actions of their own adherents reprehensible, yet which kind of action would the majority of this House prefer—the direct, unvarnished and very legal reprisals of Gaius Caesar in Gaul, or the furtive, cruel and very illegal reprisals Marcus Brutus made upon the elders of the city of Salamis in Cyprus when they couldn’t pay the forty-eight percent compound interest Marcus Brutus’s minions demanded? I have heard that Gaius Caesar tried certain Gallic chieftains and executed them. I have heard that Gaius Caesar killed many Gallic chieftains on a battlefield. I have heard that Gaius Caesar cut off the hands of four thousand Gallic men who had warred hideously against Rome at Alesia and Uxellodunum. But nowhere have I heard that Gaius Caesar lent non-citizens money, then shut them up in their own meeting hall until they starved to death! Which is what Marcus Brutus did, this eminent exemplar of everything a young Roman senator ought to be!”

  “That is an infamy, Gaius Curio,” said Brutus between his teeth. “The elders of Salamis did not die at my instigation.”

  “But you know all about them, don’t you?”

  “Through the malicious letters of Cicero, yes!”

  Curio moved on. “As to the allegations that Caesar awarded the Roman citizenship illegally, show me where has he acted one scrap differently from our beloved but unconstitutional hero Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus? Or Gaius Marius before him? Or any one of many more provincial governors who established colonies? Who recruited men with the Latin Rights rather than the full citizenship? That is a grey area, Conscript Fathers, which cannot be said to have originated with Gaius Caesar. It has become a part of the mos maiorum to reward men owning the Latin Rights with full citizenship when they serve in Rome’s armies legally, faithfully, and very often heroically. Nor can any of Caesar’s legions be called mere auxiliary legions, filled with non-citizens! Every one of them has Roman citizens serving in it.”

  Gaius Marcellus Major sneered. “For someone who said this was not the time or the place to discuss the charges of treason which will be laid against Gaius Caesar the moment he lays down his imperium, Gaius Curio, you’ve spent a great many moments speaking as if you were leading Caesar’s defense at his trial!”

  “Yes, it must look that way,” said Curio briskly. “However, I will now move to the crux of the matter, Gaius Marcellus. It is contained in the letter which this body sent to Gaius Caesar early last year. Caesar had written to ask the Senate to treat him exactly as it had treated Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, who stood for his consulship without a colleague in absentia because he was at the time governing both the Spains as well as looking after Rome’s grain supply. Certainly, no trouble! cried the Conscript Fathers, gladly endorsing one of the most blatantly unconstitutional measures ever conceived in the fertile minds of this House and pushed with indecent haste through a poorly attended tribal assembly! But for Gaius Caesar, Pompeius Magnus’s equal in all respects, this House could find nothing better to say than eat shit, Caesar!”

  The doughty little terrier showed his teeth. “I will tell you what I intend to do, Conscript Fathers. Namely, I will continue to exercise my veto in the matter of Gaius Caesar’s governorships of his provinces until the Senate of Rome agrees to treat Gaius Caesar exactly the way it is pleased to treat Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus. I will retract my veto on one condition: that whatever is done to Gaius Caesar is also done at one and the same moment to Gnaeus Pompeius! If this House strips Gaius Caesar of his imperium, his provinces and his army, then this House must in the same breath strip Gnaeus Pompeius of his imperium, his provinces and his army!”

  Now they were all sitting up! Pompey was actually staring at Curio instead of admiring his own statue, and the little band of consulars who were thought to have some allegiance to Caesar bore grins from ear to ear.

  “That’s telling them, Curio!” cried Lucius Piso.

  “Tace!” shouted Appius Claudius, who loathed Lucius Piso.

  “I move,” yelled Gaius Marcellus Major, “that Gaius Caesar be stripped of his imperium, his provinces and his army on this day! Stripped!”

  “I interpose my veto to that motion, junior consul, until you add to it that Gnaeus Pompeius be stripped of his imperium, his provinces and his army on this day! Stripped!”

  “This House decreed that it would treat the imposition of a veto on the subject of Gaius Caesar’s proconsulship as treason! You are a traitor, Curio, and I’ll see you die for it!”

  “I veto that too, Marcellus!”

  Paullus heaved himself to his feet. “Dismissed!” he roared. “The House is dismissed! Get out of here, all of you!”

  *

  Pompey sat on his stool without moving while the senators scuttled out of his curia, though he found no joy now in gazing at his own countenance on the curule dais. Nor, significantly, did Cato, Ahenobarbus, Brutus or any of the other boni make one overture toward him which he might have construed as a request to come and talk. Only Metellus Scipio joined him; when the egress was over, they left the dazzling chamber together.

  “I’m stunned,” said Pompey.

  “No more than I.”

  “What did I ever do to Curio?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then why has he singled me out?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He belongs to Caesar.” “We know that much now.”

  “He n
ever did like me, though. He used to call me all kinds of nasty things when Caesar was consul, and then he kept it up after Caesar left for Gaul.”

  “He belonged to Publius Clodius before he sold himself to Caesar, we are all aware of that. And Clodius hated you then.”

  “Why did he pick on me?”

  “Because you’re Caesar’s enemy, Pompeius.”

  The bright blue eyes tried to widen in Pompey’s puffy face. “I am not Caesar’s enemy!” he said indignantly.

  “Rubbish. Of course you are.”

  “How can you say that, Scipio? You’re not famous for your brilliance.”

  “That’s true,” said Metellus Scipio, unruffled. “That’s why I said at first that I didn’t know why he singled you out. But then I worked it out. I remembered what Cato and Bibulus always used to say, that you’re jealous of Caesar’s ability. That in your most secret heart, you’re afraid he’s better than you are.”

  They had not left the Curia Pompeia through its outside doors, choosing instead to exit through a small door inside; using this put them in the peristyle of the villa Pompey had tacked onto his theater complex like, as Cicero said, a dinghy behind a yacht.

  The First Man in Rome bit his lips savagely and held on to his temper. Metellus Scipio always said exactly what he thought because he cared nothing for the good opinions of other men; one who was born a Cornelius Scipio and also had the blood of Aemilius Paullus in his veins did not need the good opinions of other men. Even of the First Man in Rome. For Metellus Scipio owned more than impeccable ancestries. He also owned the vast fortune which had come to him upon his adoption into the plebeian Caecilii Metelli.

  Yes. Well, it was true, though Pompey couldn’t voice that admission. There had been misgivings in the early years of Caesar’s career in Gaul of the Long-hairs, but Vercingetorix had confirmed them, set them in concrete form. Pompey had devoured the dispatch to the Senate which detailed the exploits of that year—his own year as consul for the third time, half of it without a colleague. Eclipsed. Not a military foot wrong. How consummately skilled the man was! How incredibly quickly he moved, how decided he was in his strategies, how flexible he was in his tactics. And that army of his! How did he manage to make his men worship him as a god? For they did, they did. He flogged them through six feet of snow, he wore them out, he asked them to starve for him, he took them out of their winter cantonments and made them work even harder. Oh, what fools the men were who attributed it to his generosity! Avaricious troops who fought purely for money were never prepared to die for their general, but Caesar’s troops were prepared to die for him a thousand times.

  I have never had that gift, though I thought I did back in the days when I called up my own Picentine clients and marched off to soldier for Sulla. I believed in myself then, and I believed my Picentine legionaries loved me. Maybe Spain and Sertorius took it out of me. I had to grind through that awful campaign, I had to see my troops die because of my own military blunders. Blunders he has never made. Spain and Sertorius taught me that numbers do count, that it’s prudent to have lots more weight than the enemy on a battlefield. I’ve never fought undermanned since. I never will fight undermanned again. But he does. He believes in himself; he is never shaken by doubt. He will breeze into a battle so outnumbered that it’s ludicrous. And yet he doesn’t waste men nor seek battles. He’d rather do it peacefully if he can. Then he’ll turn around and lop the hands off four thousand Gauls. Calling that a way to ensure a lasting cessation of hostilities. He’s probably right. How many men did he lose at Gergovia? Seven hundred? And he wept for it! In Spain I lost almost ten times that many in a single battle, but I couldn’t weep. Perhaps what I fear most is his frightening sanity. Even in the midst of that shocking temper he remains capable of real thought, of turning events to his advantage. Yes, Scipio is right. In my most secret heart I am afraid that Caesar is better than I am….

  His wife greeted them in the atrium, offering her cool cheek for a kiss, then beaming upon that monumental fool, her father. Oh, Julia, where are you? Why did you have to go? Why couldn’t this one be like you? Why did this one have to be so cold?

  “I didn’t think the meeting would end before sunset,” said Cornelia Metella, ushering them into the dining room, “but naturally I ordered enough dinner for all of us.”

  She was quite handsome, no disgrace in marrying her on that account. Her lustrous, thick brown hair was rolled into sausages which partly covered each ear, her mouth was full enough to be kissable, her breasts considerably plumper than Julia’s had been. And her grey eyes were widely spaced, if a trifle heavy-lidded. She had submitted to the marriage bed with commendable resignation, not a virgin because she had been married to Publius Crassus, yet not, he discovered, either experienced or ardent enough to want to learn to enjoy what men did to women. Pompey prided himself on his skills as a lover, but Cornelia Metella had defeated him. On the whole she evinced no distaste or displeasure, but six years of marriage to the deliciously responsive, easily aroused Julia had sensitized him in some peculiar way; the old Pompey would never have noticed, but the post-Julia Pompey was uncomfortably aware that a part of Cornelia Metella’s mind dwelled upon the foolishness of it while he kissed her breasts or pressed himself closely against her. And on the single occasion when he had wriggled his tongue inside her labia to provoke a genuine response, he had got that response: she reared back in outraged revulsion.

  “Don’t do that!” she snarled. “It’s disgusting!”

  Or perhaps, thought the post-Julia Pompey, it might have led to helpless delight; Cornelia Metella wished to own herself.

  *

  Cato walked home alone, longing for Bibulus. Without him, the boni ranks were thin, at least when it came to ability. The three Claudii Marcelli were good enough men, and this middle one showed great promise, but they lacked the years-long, passionate hatred of Caesar that Bibulus nursed and nurtured. Nor did they know Caesar the way Bibulus did. Cato could appreciate the reason behind the five-year law about governing provinces, but neither he nor Bibulus had realized that its first victim would be Bibulus himself. So there he was, stuck in Syria and saddled with none other than that pompous, self-righteous fool Cicero right next door in Cilicia. With whom Bibulus was expected to fight his wars in tandem. How did the Senate expect a team composed of a walking horse and a pack horse to pull the chariot of Mars satisfactorily? While Bibulus dealt capably with the Parthians through his bought minion, the Parthian nobleman Ornadapates, Cicero spent fifty-seven days besieging Pindenissus in eastern Cappadocia. Fifty-seven days! Fifty-seven days to secure the capitulation of a nothing! And in the same year that Caesar built twenty-five miles of fortifications and took Alesia in thirty days! The contrast was so glaring it was little wonder the Senate smiled when Cicero’s dispatch reached it. In forty-five days. Twelve days less to get a communication from eastern Cappadocia to Rome than consumed by the siege of Pindenissus!

  Cato let himself into his house. Since he had divorced Marcia he had seen little use for many servants, and after Porcia married Bibulus and moved out, he sold off more of them. Neither he nor his two tame live-in philosophers, Athenodorus Cordylion and Statyllus, had any interest in food beyond the fact that it was necessary to eat in order to live, so the kitchen was staffed by one man who called himself a cook and one lad who assisted him. A steward was a wasteful expenditure; Cato existed without one. There was a man to do the cleaning and the marketing (Cato checked all the figures and doled out the money personally), and the bit of laundry was sent out. All of which had reduced the household expenditures to ten thousand sesterces a year. Plus the wine, which tripled it despite the fact that the wine was second pressing and quite horribly vinegary. Irrelevant. Cato and his two philosophers bibbed for the effect, not the taste. Taste was an indulgence for wealthy men, men like Quintus Hortensius, who had married Marcia.

  The thought nudged, burned, prickled, wouldn’t vanish on this bitterly disappointing day. Marcia. Marcia. He could sti
ll remember the look of her in that first glance, when he had gone to the house of Lucius Marcius Philippus for dinner. Seven years ago, all save a couple of months. Elated at what he had managed to do for Rome as a result of that ghastly special command Publius Clodius had forced him to take, the annexation of Cyprus. Well, he had duly annexed Cyprus. Shrugged when informed that its Egyptian regent, Ptolemy the Cyprian, had committed suicide. Then proceeded to sell off all the treasures and works of art for good solid cash, and put the good solid cash into two thousand chests—seven thousand talents all told. Kept two sets of books, retaining one in his own custody and giving the other to his freedman Philargyrus. No one in the Senate was going to have any grounds for accusing Cato of sticky fingers! One or the other set of accounts would get to Rome intact, Cato was sure of it.

  He had pressed the royal fleet into service to take the two thousand chests of money home—why spend money hiring a fleet when there was one to hand? Then he devised a way to retrieve the chests should a ship sink during the voyage, by tying one hundred feet of rope to each chest and attaching a big chunk of cork to the end of each rope; if a ship should sink, the ropes would uncoil and the corks bob to the surface, enabling the chests to be pulled up and saved. As a further safeguard, he put Philargyrus and his set of accounts on a ship far removed from his own.

  The royal Cypriot ships were very pretty, but never intended to sail the open waters of Our Sea in places like Cape Taenarum at the bottom of the Peloponnese. They were undecked biremes sitting low in the water, two men to an oar, each owning a skimpy sail. This meant, of course, that there was no deck to impede the unwinding of those cork-ended ropes should a ship sink. But the weather was good, though marred by a calamitous storm as the fleet rounded the Peloponnese. Even so, only one ship sank: the ship bearing Philargyrus and the second set of account books. Searching a calm sea afterward revealed not one bobbing bit of cork, alas. Cato had severely underestimated the depth of the waters.