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

by Colleen McCullough

  Then came word that one of the many young Appius Claudiuses was escorting those two legions, the Sixth and the Fifteenth, to camp in Capua, there to await transshipment to the East. The sigh of relief was collective—why hadn’t they remembered those legions no longer were Caesar’s property? That he had to bring them with him to Italian Gaul! Oh, the Gods be praised! An attitude which burgeoned when the young Appius Claudius marched the Sixth and the Fifteenth around the outskirts of Rome, and informed the Censor, head of his clan, that the troops of both legions absolutely loathed Caesar, reviled him constantly, and had been on the point of mutiny—as indeed were the other legions in Caesar’s army.

  “Isn’t the old boy clever?” asked Antony of Curio.

  “Clever? Well, I know that, Antonius, if by the old boy you mean Caesar. Who will turn fifty in a few days—not very old.”

  “I mean all this claptrap about his legions being disaffected. Caesar’s legions disaffected? Never happen, Curio, never! They’d lie down and let him shit on them. They’d die for him, every last man, including the men of Pompeius’s Sixth.”

  “Then—?”

  “He’s diddling them, Curio. He’s a sly old fox. You’d think even the Marcelli would realize that anyone can buy a young Appius Claudius. That’s if said young Appius Claudius isn’t pleased to co-operate through sheer love of making mischief. Caesar put him up to it. I happen to know that before he handed the Sixth and the Fifteenth over, Caesar held an assembly of the soldiers and told them how sorry he was to see them go. Then he gave every man a bonus of a thousand sesterces, pledged that they’d get their share of his booty, and commiserated with them about going back to standard army pay.”

  “The sly old fox indeed!” said Curio. Suddenly he shivered and stared at Antony anxiously. “Antonius, he wouldn’t—would he?”

  “Wouldn’t what?” asked Antony, ogling a pretty girl.

  “March on Rome.”

  “Oh, yes, we all think he would if he was pushed to it,” said Antony casually.

  “We all?”

  “His legates. Trebonius, Decimus Brutus, Fabius, Sextius, Sulpicius, Hirtius, da-de-da.”

  Curio broke into a cold sweat, wiped his brow with a trembling hand. “Jupiter! Oh, Jupiter! Antonius, stop leering at women and come home with me right now!”

  “Why?”

  “So I can start coaching you in earnest, you great clod! It’s up to me and then you to prevent it.”

  “I agree, we have to get him permission to stand for the consulship in absentia. Otherwise there’s going to be shit from Rhegium to Aquileia.”

  “If Cato and the Marcelli would only shut up, there might be a chance,” fretted Curio, almost running.

  “They’re fools,” said Antony contemptuously.

  *

  When the three sets of elections were held that Quinctilis, Mark Antony was returned at the top of the poll for the tribunes of the plebs, a result which didn’t dismay the boni one little bit. Throughout the years Curio had always shown great ability; all Mark Antony had ever shown was the outline of his mighty penis beneath a tunic drawn taut. If Caesar hoped to replace Curio with Antony, he was insane, was the boni verdict. These elections also threw up one of the more curious aspects of Roman political life. Gaius Cassius Longinus, still covered in glory after his exploits in Syria, was returned as a tribune of the plebs. His younger brother, Quintus Cassius Longinus, was also returned as a tribune of the plebs. But whereas Gaius Cassius was staunchly boni, as befitted the husband of Brutus’s sister, Quintus Cassius belonged completely to Caesar. The consuls for next year were both boni; Gaius Claudius Marcellus Minor was the senior consul, and Lucius Cornelius Lentulus Crus the junior consul. The praetors mostly supported Caesar, save for Cato’s Ape, Marcus Favonius, who came in at the bottom of the poll.

  And, despite the efforts of Curio and Antony (now permitted to speak in the House, as a tribune of the plebs-elect), Metellus Scipio was deputed to replace Bibulus as governor of Syria. The ex-praetor Publius Sestius was to go to Cilicia to take over from Cicero. With him as his senior legate Publius Sestius was taking Marcus Junius Brutus.

  “What are you doing leaving Rome at a time like this?” Cato demanded of Brutus, not pleased.

  Brutus produced his usual hangdog look, but even Cato had come to realize that however Brutus might look, he would do what he intended to. “I must go, Uncle,” he said apologetically.

  “Why?”

  “Because Cicero in governing Cilicia has destroyed the best part of my financial interests in that corner of the world.”

  “Brutus, Brutus! You’ve got more money than Pompeius and Caesar combined! What’s a debt or two compared with the fate of Rome?” howled Cato, exasperated. “Mark my words, Caesar is out to murder the Republic! We need every single influential man we own to counter the moves Caesar is bound to make between now and the consular elections of next year. Your duty is to remain in Rome, not gallivant around Cilicia, Cyprus, Cappadocia and wherever else you’re owed money! You’d shame Marcus Crassus!”

  “I’m sorry, Uncle, but I have clients affected, such as Marinius and Scaptius. A man’s first duty is to his clients.”

  “A man’s first duty is to his country.”

  “My country is not in any danger.”

  “Your country is on the brink of civil war!”

  “So you keep saying,” sighed Brutus, “but frankly, I don’t believe you. It’s your personal tic, Uncle Cato, it really is.”

  A repulsive thought blossomed in Cato’s mind; he glared at his nephew furiously. “Gerrae! It’s got nothing to do with your clients or unpaid debts, Brutus, has it? You’re skipping off to avoid military service, just as you have all your life!”

  “That’s not true!” gasped Brutus, paling.

  “Now it’s my turn not to believe. You are never to be found anywhere there’s the remotest likelihood of war.”

  “How can you say that, Uncle? The Parthians will probably invade before I get to the East!”

  “The Parthians will invade Syria, not Cilicia. Just as they did in the summer of last year, despite all Cicero had to say in his mountainous correspondence home! Unless we lose Syria, which I very much doubt, you’re as safe sitting in Tarsus as you would be in Rome. Were Rome not threatened by Caesar.”

  “And that too is rubbish, Uncle. You remind me of Scaptius’s wife, who fussed and clucked over her children until she turned them into hypochondriacs. A spot was a cancer, a headache something frightful happening inside the cranium, a twinge in the stomach the commencement of food poisoning or summer fever. Until finally she tempted Fate with all her carrying on, and one of her children died. Not from disease, Uncle, but from negligence on her part. She was busy looking in the market stalls instead of keeping her eye on him, and he ran beneath the wheels of a wagon.”

  “Hah!” sneered Cato, very angry. “An interesting parable, nevvy. But are you sure that Scaptius’s wife isn’t really your own mother, who certainly turned you into a hypochondriac?”

  The sad brown eyes flashed dangerously; Brutus turned on his heel and walked away. Only not to go home. It was the day on which he had fallen into the habit of visiting Porcia.

  Who, on hearing the tale of this falling-out, huffed a huge sigh and struck her palms together.

  “Oh, Brutus, tata really can be irascible, can’t he? Please don’t take umbrage! He doesn’t truly mean to hurt you. It’s just that he’s so—so militant himself. Once he’s fixed his teeth in something he can’t let go. Caesar is an obsession with him.”

  “I can excuse your father his obsessions, Porcia, but not his wretched dogmatism!” said Brutus, still vexed. “The Gods know that I cherish no love or regard for Caesar, but all he’s doing is trying to survive. I hope he doesn’t. But where is he different from half a dozen others I could name? None of whom marched on Rome. Look at Lucius Piso when the Senate stripped him of his command in Macedonia.”

  Porcia eyed him in amazement. “Brutus, that
’s no kind of comparison! Oh, you’re so politically dense! Why can’t you see politics with the clarity you see business?”

  Stiff with anger, he got to his feet. “If you’re going to try to proselytize me too, Porcia, I’m going home!” he snapped.

  “Oh! Oh!” Consumed with contrition, she reached out to take his hand and held it to her cheek, her wide grey eyes shining with tears. “Forgive me! Don’t go home! Oh, don’t go home!”

  Mollified, he took back his hand and sat down. “Well, all right then. But you have to see how dense you are, Porcia. You will never hear that Cato is wrong, whereas I know he’s often wrong. Like this present campaign in the Forum against Caesar. What does he think he’s accomplishing? All he’s managing to do is frighten people, who see his passion and can’t credit that it could be mistaken. Yet everything they hear about Caesar tells them that he’s behaving in an absolutely normal way. Look at the panic over his bringing three legions across the Alps. But he had to bring them! And he sent two of them straight to Capua. While your father was informing anyone who’d listen that he would die sooner than give those two legions up. He was wrong, Porcia! He was wrong! Caesar did precisely as the Senate directed.”

  “Yes, I agree that tata does tend to overstate things,” she said, swallowing. “But don’t quarrel with him, Brutus.” A tear dropped onto her hand. “I wish you weren’t going away!”

  “I’m not leaving tomorrow,” he said gently. “By the time I do go, Bibulus will be home.”

  “Yes, of course,” she said colorlessly, then beamed and slapped her hands on her knees. “Look at this, Brutus. I’ve been delving into Fabius Pictor, and I think I’ve found a grave anomaly. It’s in the passage where he discusses the secession of the Plebs to the Aventine.”

  Ah, that was better! Brutus settled down happily to an examination of the text, his eyes more on Porcia’s animated face than on Fabius Pictor.

  *

  But the rumors continued to fly and proliferate. Luckily the spring that year, which fell according to the calendar’s summer, was halcyon; the rain fell in the right proportion, the sun shone just warmly enough, and somehow it didn’t seem at all real to think of Caesar sitting up there in Italian Gaul, poised like a spider to pounce on Rome. Not that the ordinary folk of Rome were much preoccupied with such things; they adored Caesar universally, were inclined to think that the Senate treated him very shabbily indeed, and rounded off their thoughts with the conclusion that it would all work out for the best because things usually did. Among the powerful knights of the eighteen senior Centuries and their less pre-eminent junior colleagues, however, the rumors acted abrasively. Money was their sole concern, and the very slightest reference to civil war caused hair to rise and hearts to accelerate.

  The group of bankers who supported Caesar ardently—Balbus, Oppius and Rabirius Postumus—worked constantly in his service, talking persuasively, soothing inchoate fears, trying to make the plutocrats like Titus Pomponius Atticus see that it was not in Caesar’s best interests to contemplate civil war. That Cato and the Marcelli were behaving irresponsibly and irrationally in ascribing motives to Caesar concrete evidence said he didn’t have. That Cato and the Marcelli were more damaging to Rome and her commercial empire with their wild, unfounded allegations than any actions Caesar might take to protect his future career and his dignitas. He was a constitutional man, he always had been; why would he suddenly discard constitutionality? Cato and the Marcelli kept saying he would, but on what tangible evidence? There was none. Therefore, didn’t it actually look as if Cato and the Marcelli were using Caesar as fuel to attain a dictatorship for Pompey? Wasn’t it Pompey whose actions throughout the years smacked of unconstitutionality? Wasn’t it Pompey who hankered after the dictatorship, witness his behavior after the death of Clodius? Wasn’t it Pompey who had enabled the boni to impugn the dignitas and the reputation of Gaius Julius Caesar? Wasn’t it Pompey behind the whole affair? Whose motives were suspect, Caesar’s or Pompey’s? Whose behavior in the past indicated a lust for power, Caesar’s or Pompey’s? Who was the real danger to the Republic, Caesar or Pompey? The answer, said Caesar’s indefatigable little band of workers, always came back to Pompey.

  Who, taking his ease in his villa on the coast near Campanian Neapolis, fell ill. Desperately ill, said the grapevine. A good many senators and knights of the Eighteen immediately undertook a pilgrimage to Pompey’s villa, where they were received with grave composure by Cornelia Metella and given a lucid explanation of her husband’s extremis, followed by a firm refusal of any access to his sickbed, no matter how august the enquirer.

  “I am very sorry, Titus Pomponius,” she said to Atticus, one of the first to arrive, “but the doctors forbid all visitors. My husband is fighting for his life and needs his strength for that.”

  “Oh,” gasped Atticus, a mightily worried man, “we can’t do without the good Gnaeus Pompeius, Cornelia!”

  Which wasn’t really what he wanted to say. That concerned the possibility of Pompey’s being behind the public and senatorial campaign to impeach Caesar; Atticus, immensely wealthy and influential, needed to see Pompey and explain the effect all this political mudslinging was having on money. One of the troubles with Pompey concerned his own wealth and his ignorance of commerce. Pompey’s money was managed for him, and all contained inside banks or devoted to properly senatorial investments having to do with the ownership of land. If he were Brutus, he would already have moved to squash the boni irascibles, for all their agitation was doing was to frighten money. And to Atticus, frightened money was a nightmare. It fled into labyrinthine shelter, buried itself in utter darkness, wouldn’t come out, wouldn’t do its job. Someone had to tell the boni that they were tampering with Rome’s true lifeblood— money.

  As it was, he went away, defeated. As did all the others who came to Neapolis.

  While Pompey skulked in parts of his villa unavailable to the eyes or ears of visitors. Somehow the higher he had risen in Rome’s scheme of things, the slimmer grew the ranks of his intimate friends. At the moment, for instance, his sole solace lay in his father-in-law, Metellus Scipio. With whom he had concocted the present ruse, of pretending to be mortally ill.

  “I have to find out where I stand in people’s opinions and affections,” he said to Metellus Scipio. “Am I necessary? Am I needed? Am I loved? Am I still the First Man? This will flush them out, Scipio. I’ve got Cornelia making a list of everyone who comes to enquire after me, together with an account of what they say to her. It will tell me everything I need to know.”

  Unfortunately the caliber of Metellus Scipio’s brain did not extend to nuances and subtleties, so it never occurred to him to protest to Pompey that naturally everyone who came would deliver fulsome speeches of undying affection, but that what they said might not be what they thought. Nor did it occur to him that at least half of Pompey’s visitors were hoping Pompey would die.

  So the two of them totted up Cornelia Metella’s list with glee, played at dice and checkers and dominoes, then dispersed to pursue those activities they didn’t have in common. Pompey read Caesar’s Commentaries many times over, never with pleasure. The wretched man was more than a military genius, he was also equipped with a degree of self-confidence Pompey had never owned. Caesar didn’t tear his cheeks and chest and retire to his command tent in despair after a setback. He soldiered on serenely. And why were his legates so brilliant? If Afranius and Petreius in the Spains were half as able as Trebonius or Fabius or Decimus Brutus, Pompey would feel more confident. Metellus Scipio, on the other hand, spent his private time composing delicious little playlets with nude actors and actresses, and directed them himself.

  The mortal illness lasted for a month, after which, midway through Sextilis, Pompey popped himself into a litter and set out for his villa on the Campus Martius. Word of his grave condition had spread far and wide, and the country through which he traveled was liberally bedewed with his clients (not wanting to fall genuinely ill with a tertian or a qu
artan fever, he chose the inland, far healthier Via Latina route). They flocked to greet him, garlanded with flowers, and cheered him as he poked his head through the curtains of his litter to smile wanly and wave weakly. As he was not by nature a litter man, he decided to continue his journey in darkness, thinking to sleep some of the long, boring hours away. To discover, overjoyed, that people still came to greet him and cheer him, bearing torches to light his triumphant way.

  “It’s true!” he said delightedly to Metellus Scipio, who shared his roomy conveyance (Cornelia Metella, not wishing to have to fight off Pompey’s amorous advances, had chosen to travel alone). “Scipio, they love me! They love me! Oh, it’s true, what I’ve always said!”

  “And what’s that?” asked Metellus Scipio, yawning.

  “That all I have to do to raise soldiers in Italia is to stamp my foot upon the ground.”

  “Uh,” said Metellus Scipio, and fell asleep.

  But Pompey didn’t sleep. He pulled the curtains wide enough to be seen and reclined against a huge bank of pillows, smiling wanly and waving weakly for mile after mile. It was true, it was inarguably true! The people of Italia did love him. What was he afraid of Caesar for? Caesar didn’t stand a chance, even if he was stupid enough to march on Rome. Not that he would. In his heart of hearts Pompey knew very well that such was not Caesar’s technique. He would choose to fight in the Senate and the Forum. And, when the time came, in the courts. For it was necessary to bring him down. On that head, Pompey owned no ideological differences with the boni; he knew that Caesar’s career in the field was far from over, and that, were he not prevented, he would end in outstripping Pompey so distantly that it would be Caesar the Great—and that the Magnus would not be self-endowed.