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

by Colleen McCullough

  *

  A thousand men were definitely enough. When Pisaurum yielded amid cheers and flowers, Caesar sent back to Ariminum and started Curio off to eject Thermus from Iguvium. Then Fanum Fortunae yielded—more cheers, more flowers. On the sixteenth day of January, with the Senate’s two envoys as witnesses, Caesar accepted the surrender of the big seaport of Ancona amid cheers and flowers. He had not so far spilled one drop of Roman blood. Of Lentulus Spinther and his ten cohorts there was no sign; he had withdrawn south to Asculum Picentum. Nor did Caesar’s behavior disillusion the towns which had capitulated; he exacted no reprisals of any kind and paid for whatever he requisitioned for his troops.

  ROME TO CAMPANIA

  On the day before Caesar received Pompey’s letter, the thirteenth day of January, a man on a foundering horse had crossed the Mulvian Bridge north of Rome. The guard posted there after the Senatus Consultum Ultimum had been passed informed the man that the Senate was meeting in Pompey’s curia on the Campus Martius, and gave him a fresh mount to finish the last few miles of his journey. A client of Pompey’s who had taken it upon himself to keep an eye on the road between Ravenna and Ariminum, the horseman had chosen to make the ride to Rome himself because he was dying to see how the Senate took the news he was bringing. As anyone would who had a sense of history and a wish to belong to a great moment, he reflected as he spurred his horse with a loud clatter onto the terrazzo floor outside the Curia Pompeia.

  He slid off the animal, walked to the closed pair of bronze doors and hammered them with his fist. A startled lictor opened one to stick his head around it; Pompey’s client yanked the door wide, then strode into the chamber.

  “Here, you can’t enter the Senate in closed session!” cried the lictor.

  “Fathers of the Senate, I have news!” the invader roared.

  Every head turned; both Marcellus Minor and Lentulus Crus rose from their ivory chairs to stand gaping at him while he looked about for Pompey, whom he located in the front row on the left-hand side.

  “What news, Nonius?” asked Pompey, recognizing him.

  “Gaius Caesar has crossed the Rubicon and is advancing on Ariminum with one legion!”

  In the act of rising, Pompey froze for a moment before he flopped limply back onto his curule chair. All feeling seemed to have gone; he was conscious only of a ghastly numbness, and could not manage to speak.

  “It’s civil war!” whispered Gaius Marcellus Minor.

  Lentulus Crus, a more dominant man by far than Marcellus Minor, took a faltering step forward. “When, man?” he asked, face faded to grey.

  “He rode his battle horse with the toes across the Rubicon shortly before sunset three days ago, honored consul.”

  “Jupiter!” squeaked Metellus Scipio. “He did it!”

  These words acted like the opening of a sluice gate upon a dammed-up flood; the senators rushed headlong for the doors, became jammed in the aperture, fought and scrabbled to get out, fled in panic across the peristyle and away toward the city.

  A moment later, only a handful of boni remained.

  Sensation returned to Pompey, who managed to get up. “Come with me,” he said curtly, going to the door which permitted entry into his villa.

  Cornelia Metella took one look at their faces as the band streamed into the atrium and decided to absent herself, which left Pompey to hand his client Nonius to the steward with a request that he be well treated.

  “My thanks,” he said, patting the man on the shoulder.

  Well pleased with his contribution to history, Nonius went off.

  Pompey led the rest into his study, where everyone clustered around the console table bearing wine and poured it unwatered with shaking hands. Save Pompey, who sat in his chair behind his desk without caring what sort of insult that was to consuls and consulars.

  “One legion!” he said when his guests had all found seats and were looking at him as if at the only piece of cork in a tempestuously heaving sea. “One legion!”

  “The man must be insane,” muttered Gaius Marcellus Minor, wiping the sweat from his face with the purple border of his toga.

  But those anguished, bewildered eyes fixed on him seemed to have a more tonic effect than wine would have; Pompey threw his chest out, put his hands on his desk and cleared his throat.

  “The sanity of Gaius Caesar is not the issue,” he said. “He’s challenged us. He’s challenged the Senate and People of Rome. With one legion he’s crossed the Rubicon, with one legion he’s advancing on Ariminum, with one legion he intends to conquer Italia.” Pompey shrugged. “He can’t do it. Mars couldn’t do it.”

  “I suspect, from all one knows about Mars, that Caesar is a better general,” said Gaius Marcellus Major dryly.

  Ignoring this, Pompey looked at Cato, who hadn’t said one word since Nonius strode into the chamber—and had gulped down a very large quantity of unwatered wine.

  “Well, Marcus Cato?” Pompey asked. “What do you suggest?”

  “That,” said Cato in his most unmusical tones, “those who create great crises should also be the ones to put an end to them.”

  “Meaning you had nothing to do with it, and I everything?”

  “My opposition to Caesar is political, not military.”

  Pompey drew a breath. “Does this mean, then, that I am in command of resistance?” he asked Gaius Marcellus Minor, the senior consul. “Does it?” he asked the junior consul, Lentulus Crus.

  “Yes, of course,” said Lentulus Crus when Marcellus Minor stayed mute.

  “Then,” said Pompey briskly, “the first thing we have to do is send two envoys to Caesar at once and at the gallop.”

  “What for?” asked Cato.

  “To discover on what terms he would be prepared to withdraw into Italian Gaul.”

  “He won’t withdraw,” said Cato flatly.

  “One step at a time, Marcus Cato.” Pompey’s eyes roved over the ranks of the fifteen men who sat there and alighted upon young Lucius Caesar and his boon companion, Lucius Roscius. “Lucius Caesar, Lucius Roscius, you’re elected to do the galloping. Take the Via Flaminia and commandeer fresh horses before the ones you’re on fall dead under you. You don’t stop, even to take a piss. Just aim backward from the saddle.” He drew paper toward him and picked up a pen. “You are official envoys and you’ll speak for the entire Senate, including its magistrates. But you’ll also carry a letter from me to Caesar.” He grinned without amusement. “A personal plea to think of the Republic first, not to injure the Republic.”

  “All Caesar wants is a monarchy,” said Cato.

  Pompey didn’t reply until the letter was written and sprinkled with sand. Then he said, rolling it up and heating wax to seal it, “We don’t know what Caesar wants until he tells us.” He pressed his ring into the blob of wax, handed the letter to Roscius. “You keep it, Roscius, as my envoy. Lucius Caesar will do the talking for the Senate. Now go. Ask my steward for horses—they’ll be better than anything you’ve got. We’re already north of the city, so it will save time to start from here.”

  “But we can’t ride in togas!” said Lucius Caesar.

  “My man will give you riding gear, even if it doesn’t fit. Now go!” barked the General.

  They went.

  “Spinther’s in Ancona with as many men as Caesar has,” said Metellus Scipio, brightening. “He’ll deal with it.”

  “Spinther,” said Pompey, showing his teeth, “was still busy dithering over sending troops to Egypt after Gabinius had already restored Ptolemy Auletes to his throne. So let’s not get our hopes up by expecting great things from Spinther. I’ll send word to Ahenobarbus to join up with him and Attius Varus. Then we’ll see.”

  But every scrap of news over the next three days was dismal: Caesar had taken Ariminum, then he had taken Pisaurum, then he had taken Fanum Fortunae. With cheers and garlands, not opposition. And that was the real worry. No one had thought of the people of rural Italia and the smaller cities, the many towns. Particularl
y in Picenum, Pompey’s own purlieu. To discover now that Caesar was advancing unopposed—with a mere two cohorts!—paying for what he ate and harming no one, was appalling news.

  Capped in the afternoon of the seventeenth day of January by two messages: the first, that Lentulus Spinther and his ten cohorts had quit Ancona to retreat to Asculum Picentum; and the second, that Caesar had been cheered into Ancona. The Senate met at once.

  “Incredible!” shouted that famous fence-sitter Philippus. “With five thousand men, Spinther wouldn’t stay to meet Caesar and a thousand men! What am I doing here in Rome? Why am I not taking myself to grovel at Caesar’s feet this moment? The man’s got you bluffed! You’re exactly what he always calls you—couch generals! And that goes for you too these days, Pompeius Magnus!”

  “I am not responsible for deputing Spinther to defend Ancona!” Pompey roared. “That, Philippus, if you remember, was the decision of this House! And you voted for it!”

  “I wish I’d voted to make Caesar the King of Rome!”

  “Shut your seditious mouth!” shrieked Cato.

  “And you, you pokered-up bag of meaningless political cant, can shut yours!” Philippus shouted back.

  “Order!” said Gaius Marcellus Minor in a tired voice.

  Which seemed to work better than a holler; Philippus and Cato sat down, glaring at each other.

  “We are here to decide on a course of action,” Marcellus Minor went on, “not to bicker. How much bickering do you think is going on at Caesar’s headquarters? The answer to that, I imagine, is none. Caesar wouldn’t tolerate it. Why should Rome’s consuls?”

  “Because Rome’s consuls are Rome’s servants, and Caesar has refused to be anyone’s servant!” said Cato.

  “Oh, Marcus Cato, why do you persist in being so difficult, so obstructive? I want answers, not irrelevant statements or silly questions. How do we proceed to deal with this crisis?”

  “I suggest,” said Metellus Scipio, “that this House confirm Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus in command of all our troops and legates.”

  “I agree, Quintus Scipio,” said Cato. “Those who precipitate great crises should be the ones to put an end to them. I hereby nominate Gnaeus Pompeius as commander-in-chief.”

  “Listen,” growled Pompey, acutely aware that Cato had refrained from using Magnus, “you said that to me the other day, and I resent it! I didn’t cause this ‘great crisis,’ Cato! You did! You and all the rest of your boni confederates! I’m just the one you expect to get you out of the shit! But don’t blame me for dropping us into it! You did, Cato, you did!”

  “Order!” sighed Marcellus Minor. “We have a motion, but I doubt a division is necessary. I’ll see hands and hear ayes.”

  The House voted overwhelmingly to appoint Pompey commander-in-chief of the Republic’s forces and legates.

  Marcus Marcellus rose to his feet. “Conscript Fathers,” he said, “I hear through Marcus Cicero that recruitment in Campania is atrociously slow. How can we speed matters up? We have to lay our hands on more soldiers.”

  “Ha ha ha!” sneered Favonius, smarting because Pompey had chastised his beloved Cato. “Who was it always used to say that all he had to do to raise troops in Italia was stamp his foot on the ground? Who was that?”

  “You, Favonius, have four legs, whiskers and a long, naked tail!” snarled Pompey. “Tace!”

  “Speak as a result of the motion, Gnaeus Pompeius,” said Gaius Marcellus Minor.

  “Very well then, I will!” snapped Pompey. “If recruitment in Campania is proceeding at a snail’s pace, one can only blame those doing the recruiting. Like Marcus Cicero, whose head is probably in some obscure manuscript when it ought to be bent over the enlistment books. There are many thousands of soldiers to be had, Conscript Fathers, and you have just made it my job—my job!—to produce them. I will produce them. But a lot faster if the rats who skitter around Rome’s sewers get out of my way!”

  “Are you calling me a rat?” yelled Favonius, leaping up.

  “Oh, sit down, you dullard! I called you a rat ages ago!” said Pompey. “Attend to business, Marcus Favonius, and try to use what passes for your mind!”

  “Order!” said Marcellus Minor wearily.

  “That’s the trouble with this wretched body!” Pompey went on wrathfully. “You all think you’re entitled to your say! You all think you’re entitled to run things! You all think every decision made has to be a democratic one! Well, let me tell you something! Armies can’t be run on democratic principles. If they are, they founder. There’s a commander-in-chief, and his word is law! LAW! I am now the commander-in-chief, and I won’t be harassed and frustrated by a lot of incompetent idiots!”

  He got to his feet and walked to the middle of the floor. “I hereby declare a state of tumultus! On my say-so, not your vote! We are at war! And the last vote you made was the one that gave me the high command! I am assuming it! You will do as you are told! Hear me? Hear me? You will do as you are told!”

  “That depends,” drawled Philippus, grinning.

  A comment Pompey chose to ignore. “It is my command that every senator leave Rome immediately! Any senator who remains in Rome beyond tomorrow will be regarded as a partisan of Caesar’s, and be treated accordingly!”

  “Ye Gods,” said Philippus with a huge sigh, “I hate Campania with winter coming on! Why shouldn’t I remain in nice, snug Rome?”

  “By all means do so, Philippus!” said Pompey. “You are, after all, husband to Caesar’s niece!”

  “And father-in-law to Cato,” purred Philippus.

  *

  The state of absolute confusion which followed upon Pompey’s order only made things worse for those in Rome below the level of senator. From the time the fleeing Conscript Fathers had broadcast the news that Caesar had crossed the Rubicon, the city had spun into a panic. The word the knights used most frequently was that frightful word which had come into existence under the dictatorship of Sulla: “proscription.” The emblazoning of one’s name on a list pinned to the rostra, which meant that one was declared an enemy of Rome and the dictatorship, that any person seeing one could kill one, that one’s property and money was confiscate to the State. Two thousand senators and knights had died, and Sulla had filled his empty treasury on the profits.

  For everyone with much to lose assumed as a matter of course that Caesar would follow in Sulla’s footsteps—wasn’t it exactly like that time after Sulla landed in Brundisium and marched up the peninsula? With the common folk cheering and throwing flowers? He too had paid for every leaf, sheaf, root and shoot his army ate. What was the difference between a Cornelian and a Julian, after all? They existed on a plane far above knight-businessmen, who were less to them than the dust beneath their feet.

  Only Balbus, Oppius, Rabirius Postumus and Atticus tried to stem the panic, explain that Caesar was no Sulla, that all he was after was the vindication of his battered dignitas, that he was not about to assume the dictatorship and slaughter people indiscriminately. That he had been forced to march by the senseless, obdurate opposition of a small clique within the Senate, and that as soon as he had forced that clique to recant its policies and its decrees, he would revert to ordinary behavior.

  It did little good; no one was calm enough to listen and common sense had flown away. Disaster had struck; Rome was about to be plunged into yet another civil war. Proscriptions would follow—hadn’t everyone heard that Pompey too had spoken angrily of proscriptions, of thousands being thrown off the Tarpeian Rock? Oh, caught between a harpy and a siren! Whichever side won, the knights of the Eighteen were sure to suffer!

  Most of the senators, packing trunks, trying to explain to wives, making new wills, had no idea exactly why they had been ordered to leave Rome. Not requested: ordered. If they stayed they would be regarded as Caesar’s partisans, that was all they really understood. Sons over the age of sixteen were demanding to come too; daughters with a wedding date fixed shrilled and fluttered; bankers and accountants ran from one
noble senatorial client to another, explaining feverishly that cash was in short supply, now was not the time to sell land, sleeping partnerships were worth nothing when business had slumped.

  Little wonder, perhaps, that the most important thing of all was entirely overlooked. Not Pompey, not Cato, not any of the three Marcelli, not Lentulus Crus nor anyone else had so much as thought of emptying the Treasury.

  On the eighteenth day of January, amid overladen baggage carts trundling in hundreds through the Capena Gate en route to Neapolis, Formiae, Pompeii, Herculaneum, Capua and other Campanian destinations, the two consuls and almost all the Senate fled out of Rome. Leaving the Treasury stuffed to the rafters with money and bullion, not to mention various emergency hoards of bullion in the temples of Ops, Juno Moneta, Hercules Olivarius and Mercury, and thousands of chests of money in Juno Lucina, Iuventus, Venus Libitina and Venus Erucina. The only man who had thought to draw money from the tribuni aerarii in charge of the Treasury had been Ahenobarbus some days earlier; he had asked for and received six million sesterces to pay the many troops he confidently expected to obtain among the Marsi and Paeligni. The public fortune of Rome remained inside Rome.

  Not every senator left. Lucius Aurelius Cotta, Lucius Piso Censor and Lucius Marcius Philippus were among those who stayed. Perhaps to reinforce this decision in each other, they met for dinner on the nineteenth at Philippus’s house.

  “I’m a newly married man with a baby son,” said Piso, his bad teeth showing. “A perilous enough situation for a man of my age without rushing off like a Sardinian bandit after a sheep!”

  “Well,” said Cotta, smiling gently, “I stayed because I do not believe Caesar will lose. He’s my nephew, and I’ve never known him to act without caution, despite his reputation. It’s all thought out very carefully.”

  “And I stayed because I’m too lazy to uproot myself. Huh!” Philippus snorted. “Fancy haring off to Campania with winter in the offing! Villas shut up, no staff to light the braziers, the fish sleepy and the diet endless plates of cabbage.”