“I wish Atticus were here,” said Cicero, blinking wearily.
“Then why isn’t he? Am I not good enough company?”
“He has a quartan ague, Magnus.”
“Oh.”
Though his throat hurt and that wretched inflammation of the eyes threatened to return, Cicero resolved to plod on. Hadn’t old Scaurus once single-handedly turned around the entire Senate united against him? And Scaurus wasn’t the greatest orator in the annals of Rome! That honor belonged to Marcus Tullius Cicero. The trouble was, reflected the greatest orator of all time, that ever since his illness at Neapolis, Pompey had grown overweeningly confident. No, he hadn’t been there to witness it, but everyone had told him about it, first in letters, then in person. Besides, he could see for himself some of the same smugness Pompey used to own in abundance when he was seventeen years old, had still owned when he marched to help Sulla conquer. Spain and Quintus Sertorius had beaten it out of him, even though he ended in winning that tortuous war. Nor had it ever re-emerged until now. Perhaps, thought Cicero, in this cataclysmic confrontation with another military master, Caesar, he thought to relive that youth, to entrench himself for all time as the greatest man Rome produced. Only—was he? No, he surely couldn’t lose (and had decided that for himself, else he wouldn’t be so determined on civil war) because he was busy making sure he outnumbered Caesar at least two to one. And would forever after be hailed as the savior of his country because he refused to fight on his country’s soil. That was self-evident too.
“Magnus, what’s the harm in making a tiny concession to him? What if he were to agree to keep one legion and Illyricum?”
“No concessions,” said Pompey firmly.
“But surely somewhere along the way we’ve all lost the plot? Didn’t this start over refusing Caesar the right to stand for the consulship in absentia? So that he could keep his imperium and avoid being tried for treason? Wouldn’t it be more sensible to let him do that? Take everything from him except Illyricum—take all his legions! Just let him keep his imperium intact and stand for the consulship in absentia!”
“No concessions!” snapped Pompey.
“In one way Caesar’s agents are right, Magnus. You’ve had many concessions greater than that. Why not Caesar?”
“Because, you fool, even if Caesar were reduced to a privatus—no provinces, no army, no imperium, no anything!—he’d still have designs on the State! He’d still overthrow it!”
Ignoring the reference to foolishness, Cicero tried again. And again. But always the answer was the same. Caesar would never willingly give up his imperium, he would elect to keep his army and his provinces. There would be civil war.
Toward the end of the day they abandoned the major issue and concentrated instead on the draft of Mark Antony’s speech.
“A distorted tissue of half truths” was Pompey’s final verdict. He sniffed, flicked the paper contemptuously. “What do you think Caesar will do if he succeeds in overthrowing the State, when a tawdry, penniless minion like Antonius dares to say such things?”
With the result that a profoundly glad Cicero saw his guest off the premises, then almost resolved to get drunk. What stopped him was a horrible thought: Jupiter, he owed Caesar millions! Millions which would now have to be found and repaid. For it was the height of bad form to owe money to a political opponent.
THE RUBICON
from JANUARY 1 until
APRIL 5 of 49 B.C.
ROME
At dawn on the first day of the new year, Gaius Scribonius Curio arrived at his house on the Palatine, where he was greeted ecstatically by his wife.
“Enough, woman!” he said, hugging the breath out of her, so glad was he to see her. “Where’s my son?”
“You’re just in time to see me give him his first meal of the day,” Fulvia said, took him by the hand and led him to the nursery, where she lifted the snoozing baby Curio from his cradle and held him up proudly. “Isn’t he beautiful? Oh, I always wanted to have a red-haired baby! He’s your image, and won’t he be naughty? Urchins always are.”
“I haven’t seen any urchin in him. He’s absolutely placid.”
“That’s because his world is ordered and his mother transmits no anxieties to him.” Fulvia nodded dismissal to the nursery maid and slipped her robe off her shoulders and arms.
For a moment she stood displaying those engorged breasts, milk beading their nipples: to Curio, the most wonderful sight he had ever seen—and all because of him. His loins ached with want of her, but he moved to a chair as she sat down in another and held the baby, still half asleep, to one breast. The reflex initiated, baby Curio began to suck with long, audible gulps, his tiny hands curled contentedly against his mother’s brown skin.
“I wouldn’t care,” he said in a gruff voice, “if I were to die tomorrow, Fulvia, having known this. All those years of Clodius, and I never realized what a true mother you are. No wet nurses, just you. How efficient you are. How much motherhood is a part of living for you, neither a nuisance nor a universe.”
She looked surprised. “Babies are lovely, Curio. They’re the ultimate expression of what exists between a husband and wife. They need little in one way, lots in another. It gives me pleasure to do the natural things with them and for them. When they drink my milk, I’m exalted. It’s my milk, Curio! I make it!” She grinned wickedly. “However, I’m perfectly happy to let the nursery maid change the diapers and let the laundry maid wash them.”
“Proper,” he said, leaning back to watch.
“He’s four months old today,” she said.
“Yes, and I’ve missed three nundinae of seeing him grow.”
“How was Ravenna?”
He shrugged, grimaced.
“Ought I to have asked, how is Caesar?”
“I don’t honestly know, Fulvia.”
“Haven’t you talked with him?”
“Hours every day for three nundinae.”
“And yet you don’t know.”
“He keeps his counsel while he discusses every aspect of the situation lucidly and dispassionately,” said Curio, frowning and leaning forward to caress the undeniably red fuzz on his son’s working scalp. “If one wanted to hear a master Greek logician, the man would be a disappointment after Caesar. Everything is weighed and defined.”
“So?”
“So one comes away understanding everything except the single aspect one wants most to understand.”
“Which is?”
“What he intends to do.”
“Will he march on Rome?”
“I wish I could say yes, I wish I could say no, meum mel. But I can’t. I have no idea.”
“They don’t think he will, you know. The boni and Pompeius.”
“Fulvia!” Curio exclaimed, sitting up straight. “Pompeius can’t possibly be that naive, even if Cato is.”
“I’m right,” she said, detaching baby Curio from her nipple, sitting him up on her lap to face her and bending him gently forward until he produced a loud eructation. When she picked him up again, she transferred him to her other breast. This done, she resumed speaking as if there had been no pause. “They remind me of certain small animals— the kind which own no real aggression, but make a mock show of it because they’ve learned that such mock shows work. Until the elephant comes along and treads on them because he simply doesn’t see them.” She sighed. “The strain in Rome is enormous, husband. Everyone is petrified. Yet the boni keep on behaving like those mock-aggressive little animals. They posture and prate in the Forum, they send the Senate and the Eighteen into absolute paroxysms of fear. While Pompeius says all sorts of weighty and gloomy things about civil war being inevitable to mice like poor old Cicero. But he doesn’t believe what he says, Curio. He knows that Caesar has only one legion this side of the Alps, and he has had no evidence that more are coming. He knows that were more to come, they’d be in Italian Gaul by now. The boni know those things too. Don’t you see? The louder the fuss they make and t
he more upsetting it is, the greater their victory will appear when Caesar gives in. They want to cover themselves in glory.”
“What if Caesar doesn’t give in?”
“They’ll be stepped on.” She looked at Curio keenly. “You must have some sort of instinct about what will happen, Gaius. What does your instinct say?”
“That Caesar is still trying to solve his dilemma legally.”
“Caesar doesn’t dither.”
“I am aware of that.”
“Therefore it’s all sorted out in his mind already.”
“Yes, in that I think you’re right, wife.”
“Are you here for a purpose, or are you home for good?”
“I’ve been entrusted with a letter from Caesar to the Senate. He wants it read today at the inaugural meeting of the new consuls.”
“Who’s to read it out?”
“Antonius. I’m a privatus these days; they wouldn’t listen.”
“Can you stay with me for a few days at least?”
“I hope I never have to leave again, Fulvia.”
Shortly thereafter Curio departed for the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitol, wherein the New Year’s Day meeting of the Senate was always held. When he returned several hours later, he brought Mark Antony with him.
The preparations for dinner took some moments; prayers had to be said, an offering made to the Lares and Penates, togas doffed and folded, shoes removed, feet washed and dried. During all of which Fulvia held her peace, then usurped the lectus imus for herself—she was one of those scandalously forward women who insisted on reclining to eat.
“Tell me everything,” she said as soon as the first course was laid out and the servants had retired.
Antony ate, Curio talked.
“Our wolfing friend here read Caesar’s letter out so loudly that nothing could overcome his voice,” said Curio, grinning.
“What did Caesar have to say?”
“He proposed that either he should be allowed to keep his provinces and his army, or else that all other holders of imperium should step down at one and the same moment he did.”
“Ah!” Fulvia exclaimed, satisfied. “He’ll march.”
“What makes you think that?” asked her husband.
“He made an absolutely absurd, unacceptable request.”
“Well, I know that, but…”
“She’s right,” mumbled Antony, hand and mouth full of eggs. “He’ll march.”
“Go on, what happened next?”
“Lentulus Crus was in the chair. He refused to throw Caesar’s proposal open to debate. Instead, he filibustered on the general state of the nation.”
“But Marcellus Minor is the senior consul; he has the fasces for January! Why wasn’t he in the chair?”
“Went home after the religious ceremonies,” mumbled Antony, “Headache or something.”
“If you’re going to speak, Marcus Antonius, take your snout out of the trough!” said Fulvia sharply.
Startled, Antony swallowed and achieved a penitent smile. “Sorry,” he said.
“She’s a strict mother,” said Curio, eyes adoring her.
“What happened next?” asked the strict mother.
“Metellus Scipio launched into a speech,” said Curio, and sighed. “Ye Gods, he’s boring! Luckily he was too eager to get to his peroration to waffle on interminably. He put a motion to the House. The Law of the Ten Tribunes was invalid, he said, and that meant Caesar had no right whatsoever to his provinces or his army. He would have to appear inside Rome as a privatus to contest the next consular elections. Scipio then moved that Caesar be ordered to dismiss his army by a date to be fixed, or else be declared a public enemy.”
“Nasty,” said Fulvia.
“Oh, very. But the House was all on his side. Hardly anyone voted against his motion.”
“It didn’t pass, surely!”
Antony gulped hastily, then said with commendable clarity, “Quintus Cassius and I vetoed it.”
“Oh, well done!”
*
Pompey, however, didn’t consider the veto well done at all. When the debate resumed in the House on the second day of January and resulted in another tribunician veto, he lost his temper. The strain was telling on him more than on anyone else in that whole anguished, terrified city; Pompey had the most to lose.
“We’re getting nowhere!” he snarled to Metellus Scipio. “I want to see this business finished! It’s ridiculous! Day after day, month after month—if we’re not careful, the anniversary of the Kalends of March last year will roll around and we’ll still have come no closer to putting Caesar in his place! I have the feeling that Caesar is running rings around me, and I don’t like that feeling one little bit! It’s time the comedy was ended! It’s time the Senate acted once and for all! If they can’t secure a law in the Popular Assembly to strip Caesar of everything, then they’ll have to pass the Senatus Consultum Ultimum and leave the matter to me!”
He clapped three times, the signal for his steward.
“I want a message sent immediately to every senator in Rome,” he told his steward curtly. “They are to report to me here two hours from now.”
Metellus Scipio looked worried. “Pompeius, is that wise?” he ventured. “I mean, summon censors and consulars?”
“Yes, summon! I’m fed up, Scipio! I want this business with Caesar settled!”
Like most men of action, Pompey found it extremely difficult to coexist with indecision. And, like most men of action, Pompey wanted to be in absolute command. Not pushed and pulled by a parcel of incompetent, shilly-shallying senators who he knew were not his equals in anything. The situation was totally exasperating!
Why hadn’t Caesar given in? And, since he hadn’t given in, why was he still sitting in Ravenna with only one legion? Why wasn’t he doing something? No, clearly he didn’t intend to march on Rome—but if he didn’t, what did he think he was going to do? Give in, Caesar! Give up, give way! But he didn’t. He wouldn’t. What tricks did he have up his sleeve? How could he extricate himself from this predicament if he didn’t intend to give in, nor intend to march? What was going on in his mind? Did he think to prolong this senatorial impasse until the Nones of Quinctilis and the consular elections? But he would never get permission to stand in absentia, even if he managed to hang onto his imperium. Was it in his mind to send a few thousand of his loyalest soldiers to Rome on an innocent furlough at the time of the elections? He’d done that already, to secure the consulship for Pompeius and Crassus six years ago. But nothing got round the in absentia, so why? Why? Did he think to terrorize the Senate into yielding permission to stand in absentia? By sending thousands of his loyalest soldiers on furlough?
Up and down, up and down; Pompey paced the floor in torment until his steward came, very timidly, to inform him that there were many senators waiting in the atrium.
“I’ve had enough!” he shouted, striding into the room. “I have had enough!”
Perhaps one hundred and fifty men stood gaping at him in astonishment, from Appius Claudius Pulcher Censor to the humble urban quaestor Gaius Nerius. A pair of angry blue eyes raked the ranks and noted the omissions: Lucius Calpurnius Piso Censor, both the consuls, many of the consulars, every senator known to be a partisan of Caesar’s and several who were known not to favor Caesar—but didn’t favor being summoned by a man with no legal right to summon either. Still, there were sufficient to make a good beginning.
“I have had enough!” he said again, climbing onto a bench of priceless pink marble. “You cowards! You fools! You vacillating milksops! I am the First Man in Rome, and I am ashamed to call myself the First Man in Rome! Look at you! For ten months this farce has been going on over the provinces and the army of Gaius Julius Caesar, and you’ve gotten nowhere! Absolutely nowhere!”
He bowed to Cato, Favonius, Ahenobarbus, Metellus Scipio and two of the three Marcelli. “Honored colleagues, I do not include you in these bitter words, but I wanted you here t
o bear witness. The Gods know you’ve fought long and hard to terminate the illegal career of Gaius Caesar. But you get no real support, and this evening I intend to remedy that.”
Back to the rest, some of them, like Appius Claudius Pulcher Censor, none too pleased. “I repeat! You fools! You cowards! You weak, whining, puny collection of has-beens and nowheres! I am fed up!” He drew a long, sucking breath. “I have tried. I have been patient. I have held back. I have suffered all of you. I have wiped your arses and held your heads while you puked. And don’t stand there looking mortally offended, Varro! If the shoe fits, wear it! The Senate of Rome is supposed to set the tone and serve as the example to every other body politic and body public from one end of Rome’s empire to the other. And the Senate of Rome is a disgrace! Every last one of you is a disgrace! Here you are, faced by one man—one man!—yet for ten months you’ve let him shit all over you! You’ve wavered and shivered, argued and sniveled, voted and voted and voted and voted—and gotten nowhere! Ye Gods, how Gaius Caesar must be laughing!”
By this everyone was stunned far beyond indignation; few of the men present had served in the field with Pompey in a situation which revealed his ugly side, but many of them were now grasping why Pompey got things done. Their affable, sweet-tempered, self-deprecating Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus was a martinet. Many of them had seen Caesar lose his temper, and still shivered in their boots at the memory of it. Now they saw Pompey lose his temper, and shivered in their boots. And they began to wonder: which of the two, Caesar or Pompey, would prove the harder master?
“You need me!” roared Pompey from the superior height of his bench. “You need me, and never forget it! You need me! I’m all that stands between you and Caesar. I’m your only refuge because I’m the only one among the lot of you who can beat Caesar on a field of battle. So you’d better start being nice to me. You’d better start bending over backward to please me. You’d better smarten up your act. You’d better resolve this mess. You’d better pass a decree and procure a law in the Assembly to strip Caesar of army, provinces and imperium! I can’t do it for you because I’m only one man with one vote, and you haven’t got the guts to institute martial law and put me in charge!”
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