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

by Colleen McCullough

  Curio gaped. “Ravenna? He couldn’t be!”

  “Huh!” grunted Antony. “He travels like the wind, and he didn’t slow himself down with any legions. They’re all still where they ought to be, across the Alps. But he’s in Ravenna.”

  “What are we going to do? What can we tell him?”

  “The truth,” said Antony calmly. “We’re just his lackeys, Curio, and never forget it. He’s the one will make the decisions.”

  *

  Gaius Claudius Marcellus Major had made a decision. As soon as he dismissed the Senate he walked out to Pompey’s villa on the Campus Martius, accompanied by Cato, Ahenobarbus, Metellus Scipio and the two consuls-elect: his cousin Gaius Marcellus Minor and Lentulus Crus. About halfway there the servant Marcellus Major had sent running back to his house on the Palatine returned bearing Marcellus Major’s own sword. Like most swords owned by noblemen, it was the usual two-foot-long, wickedly-sharp-on-both-sides Roman gladius; where it differed from the weapons carried by ordinary soldiers was in its scabbard, made of silver preciously wrought, and in its handle, made of ivory carved as a Roman Eagle.

  Pompey met them at the door himself and admitted them into his study, where a servant poured wine-and-water for everyone save Cato, who rejected the water with loathing. Pompey waited with fretful impatience for the man to distribute these refreshments and go; in fact, he would not have offered did this deputation not look as if its members badly needed a drink.

  “Well?” he demanded. “What happened?”

  In answer, Marcellus Major silently extended his sheathed sword to Pompey. Startled, Pompey took it in a reflex action and stared at it as if he had never seen a sword before.

  He wet his lips. “What does this mean?” he asked fearfully.

  “Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus,” said Marcellus Major very solemnly, “I hereby authorize you on behalf of the Senate and People of Rome to defend the State against Gaius Julius Caesar. In the name of the Senate and People of Rome, I formally confer on you possession and use of the two legions, the Sixth and Fifteenth, sent by Caesar to Capua, and further commission you to commence recruiting more legions until you can bring your own army from the Spains. There is going to be civil war.”

  The brilliant blue eyes had widened; Pompey stared down at the sword again, licked his lips again. “There is going to be civil war,” he said slowly. “I didn’t think it would come to that. I—really—didn’t….” He tensed. “Where’s Caesar? How many legions does he have in Italian Gaul? How far has he marched?”

  “He has one legion, and he hasn’t marched,” said Cato.

  “He hasn’t marched? He—which legion?”

  “The Thirteenth. It’s in Tergeste,” Cato answered.

  “Then—then—what happened? Why are you here? Caesar won’t march with one legion!”

  “So we think,” said Cato. “That’s why we’re here. To deflect him from the ultimate treason, a march on Rome. Our junior consul will inform Caesar that steps have been taken, and the whole business will come to nothing. We’re getting in first.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Pompey, handing the sword back to Marcellus Major. “Thank you, I appreciate the significance of the gesture, but I have my own sword and it is always ready to draw in defense of my country. I’ll gladly take command of the two legions in Capua, but is it really necessary to start recruiting?”

  “Definitely,” said Marcellus Major firmly. “Caesar has to be made to see that we are in deadly earnest.”

  Pompey swallowed. “And the Senate?” he asked.

  “The Senate,” said Ahenobarbus, “will do as it’s told.”

  “But it authorized this visit, of course.”

  Marcellus Major lied again. “Of course,” he said.

  It was the second day of December.

  *

  On the third day of December, Curio learned what had happened at Pompey’s villa and went back to the House in righteous anger. Ably assisted by Antony, he accused Marcellus Major of treason and appealed to the Conscript Fathers to back him—to acknowledge that Caesar had done no wrong—to admit that there were no legions save the Thirteenth in Italian Gaul—and to see that the entire crisis had been maliciously manufactured by, at most, seven boni and Pompey.

  But a lot stayed away, and those who came seemed so dazed and confused that they were incapable of any kind of response, let alone sensible action. Curio and Antony got nowhere. Marcellus Major continued to obstruct everything beyond Pompey’s entitlement to defend the State. Which he made no attempt to legitimize.

  On the sixth day of December, while Curio battled on in the Senate, Aulus Hirtius arrived in Rome, commissioned by Caesar to see what could be retrieved. But when Curio and Antony told him of the giving of the sword to Pompey, and of Pompey’s accepting it, he despaired. Balbus had set up a meeting for him with Pompey on the following morning, but Hirtius didn’t go. What was the use, he asked himself, if Pompey had accepted the sword? Better by far to hurry back to Ravenna and inform Caesar of events in person; all he had to go on was letters.

  Pompey didn’t wait overlong for Hirtius on the morning of the seventh day of December; well before noon he was on his way to inspect the Sixth and the Fifteenth in Capua.

  The last day of Curio’s memorable tribunate of the plebs was the ninth one of December. Exhausted, he spoke yet again in the House to no avail, then left that evening for Caesar in Ravenna. The baton had passed to Mark Antony, universally despised as a slug.

  *

  Cicero had arrived in Brundisium toward the end of November, to find himself met by Terentia; her advent did not astonish him, as she needed to make up a great deal of lost ground. For, with her active connivance, Tullia had married Dolabella. A match Cicero had opposed strongly, wanting his daughter to go to Tiberius Claudius Nero, a very haughty young patrician senator of limited intelligence and no charm.

  The great advocate’s displeasure was increased by his anxiety for his beloved secretary, Tiro, who had fallen ill in Patrae and had to be left behind. Then it was further exacerbated when he learned that Cato had moved a triumph for Bibulus, after which he voted against awarding a triumph to Cicero.

  “How dare Cato!” fumed Cicero to his wife. “Bibulus never even left his house in Antioch, whereas I fought battles!”

  “Yes, dear,” said Terentia automatically, zeroing in on her own goals. “But will you consent to meet Dolabella? Once you do meet him you’ll understand completely why I didn’t oppose the union at all.” Her ugly face lit up. “He’s delightful, Marcus, truly delightful! Witty, intelligent— and so devoted to Tullia.”

  “I forbade it!” cried Cicero. “I forbade it, Terentia! You had absolutely no right to let it happen!”

  “Listen, husband,” hissed that redoubtable lady, thrusting her beak into Cicero’s face, “Tullia is twenty-seven years old! She doesn’t need your permission to marry!”

  “But I’m the one who has to find the dowry, so I’m the one who should pick her husband!” roared Cicero, emboldened as the result of spending many months far away from Terentia, during which he had proven himself an admirable governor with a great deal of authority. Authority should extend to the domestic sphere.

  She blinked at being defied, but she didn’t back down. “Too late!” she roared, even more loudly. “Tullia married Dolabella, and you’ll find her dowry or I’ll personally castrate you!”

  Thus it was that Cicero journeyed up the Italian peninsula from Brundisium accompanied by a shrew of a wife who was not about to accord him the inalienable rights of the paterfamilias. He reconciled himself to having to meet the odious Dolabella. Which he did in Beneventum, discovering to his consternation that he was no more proof against Dolabella’s charms than Terentia. To cap matters, Tullia was pregnant, a fate which had not been her lot with either of her two previous husbands.

  Dolabella also informed his father-in-law about the hideous events occurring in Rome, clapped Cicero on the back and galloped off back to Rome to be, a
s he put it, a part of the fray.

  “I’m for Caesar, you know!” he yelled from the safety of his horse. “Good man, Caesar!”

  No more litters. Cicero hired a carriage in Beneventum and continued into western Campania at an accelerated pace.

  He found Pompey in residence at Pompeii, where Cicero had a snug little villa himself, and sought information from one of the few men he thought might actually know what really was going on.

  “I received two letters yesterday in Trebula,” he said to Pompey, frowning in puzzlement. “One was from Balbus, and one from none other than Caesar himself. So sweet and friendly… Anything either of them could do for me, it would be an honor to witness my well-deserved triumph, did I need a trifling loan? What’s the man doing that for, if he’s marching on Rome? Why is he courting me? He knows very well I’ve never been a partisan.”

  “Well, actually,” said Pompey uneasily, “Gaius Marcellus rather took the bit between his teeth. Did things he wasn’t officially authorized to do. Though I didn’t know it at the time, Cicero, I swear I didn’t. You’ve heard he gave me a sword, and that I took it?”

  “Yes, Dolabella told me.”

  “Trouble is, I assumed the Senate had sent him with the sword. But the Senate hadn’t. So here I am betwixt Scylla and Charybdis, more or less committed to defending the State, taking over command of two legions which have fought for Caesar for years, and starting to recruit all over Campania, Samnium, Lucania and Apulia. But it isn’t really legal, Cicero. The Senate didn’t commission me, nor is there a Senatus Consultum Ultimum in effect. Yet I know civil war is upon us.”

  Cicero’s heart sank. “Are you sure, Gnaeus Pompeius? Are you really sure? Have you consulted anyone other than rabid boars like Cato and the Marcelli? Have you talked to Atticus, any of the other important knights? Have you sat in the Senate?”

  “How can I sit in the Senate when I’m recruiting troops?” snarled Pompey. “And I did see Atticus a few days ago. Well, quite a few days ago, actually, though it seems like yesterday.”

  “Magnus, are you sure civil war can’t be averted?”

  “Absolutely,” said Pompey very positively. “There will be civil war, it’s certain. That’s why I’m glad to be out of Rome for a while. Easier to think things through. Because we can’t let Italia suffer yet again, Cicero. This war against Caesar cannot be let happen on Italian soil. It must be fought abroad. Greece, I think, or Macedonia. East of Italia, anyway. The whole of the East is in my clientele; I can drum up support everywhere from Actium to Antioch. And I can bring my Spanish legions directly from Spain without landing them on Italian soil. Caesar has nine legions left, plus about twenty-two cohorts of recruits freshly levied from across the Padus. I have seven legions in the Spains, two legions in Capua, and however many cohorts I can recruit now. There are two legions in Macedonia, three in Syria, one in Cilicia and one in Asia Province. I can also demand troops from Deiotarus of Galatia and Ariobarzanes of Cappadocia. If necessary, I’ll also demand an army from Egypt and bring the African legion over too. Whichever way you look at it, I ought to have upward of sixteen Roman legions, ten thousand foreign auxiliaries, and— oh, six or seven thousand horse.”

  Cicero sat and stared at him, heart sinking. “Magnus, you can’t remove legions from Syria with the Parthians threatening!”

  “My sources say there is no threat, Cicero. Orodes is having trouble at home. He shouldn’t have executed the Surenas and then Pacorus. Pacorus was his own son.”

  “But—but oughtn’t you be trying to conciliate with Caesar first? I know from Balbus’s letter that he’s working desperately to avert a confrontation.”

  “Pah!” spat Pompey, sneering. “You know nothing about it, Cicero! Balbus went to great lengths to make sure I didn’t leave for Campania at dawn on the Nones, assured me that Caesar had sent Aulus Hirtius especially to see me. So I wait, and I wait, and then I discover that Hirtius turned round and went back to Caesar in Ravenna without so much as trying to keep his appointment with me! That’s how much Caesar wants peace, Cicero! It’s all a big front, this Balbus-instigated lobbying! I tell you straight that Caesar is bent on civil war. Nothing will deflect him. And I have made up my mind. I will not fight a civil war on Italian soil; I will fight him in Greece or Macedonia.”

  But, thought Cicero, scribbling a letter to Atticus in Rome, it isn’t Caesar bent on civil war—or at least, not Caesar alone. Magnus is absolutely set on it, and thinks that all will be forgiven and forgotten if he makes sure Italia doesn’t have to suffer the civil war on her own soil. He’s found his way out.

  *

  The day was the tenth one of December when Cicero learned how Pompey felt about civil war; on the same day in Rome, Mark Antony took office as a tribune of the plebs. And proceeded to demonstrate that he was as able a speaker as his grandfather the Orator, not to mention quick-witted. He spoke tellingly of the offering of the sword and the illegality of the junior consul’s actions in such a stentorian voice that even Cato understood he could not be shouted down or drowned out.

  “Furthermore,” he thundered, “I am authorized by Gaius Julius Caesar to say that Gaius Caesar will be happy to give up the two provinces of Gaul on the far side of the Alps together with six of his legions, if this House permits him to keep Italian Gaul, Illyricum and two legions.”

  “That’s only eight legions, Marcus Antonius,” said Marcellus Major. “What happened to the other legion and those twenty-two cohorts of recruits?”

  “The ninth legion, which for the moment we will call the Fourteenth, will vanish, Gaius Marcellus. Caesar doesn’t hand over an under-strength army, and at the moment all his legions are well under strength. One legion and the twenty-two cohorts of new men will be incorporated into the other eight legions.”

  A logical answer, but an answer to an irrelevant question. Gaius Marcellus Major and the two consuls-elect had no intention of putting Antony’s proposal to a vote. The House was, besides, barely up to quorum number, so many senators were absent; some had already left Rome for Campania, others were desperately trying to squirrel away assets or collect enough cash to be comfortable in an exile long enough to cover the period of the civil war. Which now seemed to be taken for granted, though it was also becoming generally known that there were no extra legions in Italian Gaul, and that Caesar sat quietly in Ravenna while the Thirteenth Legion enjoyed a furlough on the nearest beaches.

  Antony, Quintus Cassius, the consortium of bankers and all of Caesar’s most important adherents inside Rome fought valiantly to keep Caesar’s options open, constantly assuring everyone from the Senate to the plutocrats that Caesar would be happy to hand over six of his legions and both the further Gauls provided he could keep Italian Gaul, Illyricum and two legions. But on the day following Curio’s arrival in Ravenna, Antony and Balbus both received curt letters from Caesar which said that he could no longer entirely ignore the possibility that he would need his army to protect his person and his dignitas from the boni and Pompey the Great. He had therefore, he said, sent secretly to Fabius in Bibracte to ship him two of the four legions there, and sent with equal secrecy to Trebonius on the Mosa to ship three of his four legions at once to Narbo, where they were to go under the command of Lucius Caesar and prevent Pompey’s Spanish legions from marching toward Italia.

  “He’s ready,” said Antony to Balbus, not without satisfaction.

  Little Balbus was less plump these days, so great had been the strain; he eyed Antony apprehensively with those big, brown, mournful eyes, and pursed his full lips together. “Surely we will prevail, Marcus Antonius,” he said. “We must prevail!”

  “With the Marcelli in the saddle and Cato squawking from the front benches, Balbus, we don’t stand a chance. The Senate—at least that part of it which can still pluck up the courage to attend meetings—will only go on saying that Caesar is Rome’s servant, not Rome’s master.”

  “In which case, what does that make Pompeius?”

  “Clearly
Rome’s master,” said Antony. “But who runs whom, do you think? Pompeius or the boni?”

  “Each is sure he runs the other, Marcus Antonius.”

  December continued to run away with frightening rapidity—attendance in the Senate dwindled even more; quite a number of houses on the Palatine and the Carinae were shut up fast, their knockers removed from their doors; and many of Rome’s biggest companies, brokerages, banks and contractors were using the bitter experience accumulated during other civil wars to shore up their fortifications until they were capable of resisting whatever was to come. For it was coming. Pompey and the boni would not permit that it did not. Nor would Caesar bend until he touched the ground.

  On the twenty-first of December, Mark Antony gave a brilliant speech in the House. It was superbly structured and rhetorically thrilling, and detailed with scrupulous chronology the entire sum of Pompey’s transgressions against the mos maiorum from the time, aged twenty-two, when he had illegally enlisted his father’s veterans and marched with three legions to assist Sulla in that civil war; it ended with the consulship without a colleague, and appended an epilogue concerning the acceptance of illegally tendered swords. The peroration was devoted to a mercilessly witty analysis of the characters of the twenty-two wolves who had succeeded in cowing the three hundred and seventy senatorial sheep.

  Pompey shared his copy of the speech with Cicero; on the twenty-fifth day of December they encountered each other in Formiae, where both had villas. But it was to Cicero’s villa that they repaired, therein to spend many hours talking.

  “I am obdurate,” said Pompey after Cicero had exhausted himself finding reasons why conciliation with Caesar was still possible. “There can be absolutely no concessions made to Caesar. The man does not want a peaceful settlement, I don’t care what Balbus, Oppius and the rest say! I don’t even care what Atticus says!”