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

by Colleen McCullough

  “The way babies turn out has nothing to do with their sire,” said Atticus thoughtfully. “I’ve come to the conclusion that their mothers force them in utero into whatever sort of baby they want.”

  “Rubbish!” said Fulvia, chuckling.

  “No, it really isn’t. If babies emerge a disappointment, that’s because their mothers don’t care enough to force. When my Pilia was pregnant with Attica, she was determined to produce a girl with tiny little ears. She didn’t care about anything save the sex and those ears, though big ears run on both sides of the family. Yet Attica has tiny little ears. And she’s a girl.”

  These were the things the best friends spoke about; for Fulvia, a masculine view of feminine concerns, and for Atticus, a rarely accorded chance to be himself. They had no secrets from each other, nor any wish to impress each other.

  But the pleasure and inconsequence of that particular visit from Atticus was interrupted by Mark Antony, whose appearance inside the sacred boundary was so disturbing in itself that Fulvia paled at sight of him, began to shake.

  He looked very grim yet was curiously aimless—couldn’t sit, couldn’t speak, looked anywhere except at Fulvia.

  Her hand went out to Atticus. “Antonius, tell me!”

  “It’s Curio!” he blurted. “Oh, Fulvia, Curio is dead!”

  Her head seemed stuffed with wool, her lips parted, the dark blue eyes stared glassily. She got to her feet and went to her knees in the same movement, a reflex from somewhere outside; inside herself she couldn’t assimilate it, couldn’t believe it.

  Antony and Atticus lifted her, put her into a high-backed chair, chafed her nerveless hands.

  Her heart—where was it going? Tripping, stumbling, booming, dying. No pain yet. That would come later. There were no words, no breath to scream, no power to run. Just the same as Clodius.

  Antony and Atticus looked at one another above her head.

  “What happened?” asked Atticus, trembling.

  “Juba and Varus led Curio into a trap. He’d been doing well, but only because they didn’t want him to do otherwise. Curio’s not a military man. They cut his army to pieces—hardly any of his men survived. Curio died on the field. Fighting.”

  “He’s one man we couldn’t afford to lose.”

  Antony turned to Fulvia, stroked the hair from her brow and took her chin in one huge hand. “Fulvia, did you hear me?”

  “I don’t want to hear,” she said fretfully.

  “Yes, I know that. But you must.”

  “Marcus, I loved him!”

  Oh, why was he here? Save that he had to come, imperium or no. The news had reached him and Lepidus by the same messenger; Lepidus had gone galloping out to Pompey’s villa on the Campus Martius, where Antony, following Caesar’s example, had taken up residence when in the vicinity of Rome. Curio’s best friend since adolescence, Antony took his death very hard, wept for those old days and for what Curio might have become in Caesar’s government. The fool, with his laurel-wreathed fasces! Going off so blithely.

  To Lepidus, a rival had been removed from his path. Ambition hadn’t blinded him, it simply drove him. And Curio dead was a bonus. Unfortunately he didn’t have the wit to hide his satisfaction from Antony, who, being Antony, dashed his tears away as soon as Lepidus arrived and swore that he would have his revenge on Attius Varus and King Juba; Lepidus interpreted this swift change in mood as lack of love for Curio on Antony’s part, and spoke his mind.

  “A good thing if you ask me,” he said with satisfaction.

  “How do you arrive at that conclusion?” asked Antony quietly.

  Lepidus shrugged, made a moue. “Curio was bought, therefore he wasn’t to be trusted.”

  “Your brother Paullus was bought too. Does that go for him?”

  “The circumstances were very different,” said Lepidus stiffly.

  “You’re right, they were. Curio gave value for Caesar’s money. Paullus swallowed it up without gratitude or return service.”

  “I didn’t come here to quarrel, Antonius.”

  “Just as well. You’re not up to my weight, Lepidus.”

  “I’ll convene the Senate and give it the news.”

  “Outside the pomerium, please. And I’ll give it the news.”

  “As you wish. I suppose that means I inherit the job of telling the ghastly Fulvia.” Lepidus produced a smile. “Still, I don’t mind. It will be an experience to break that kind of news to someone. Especially someone I dislike. It won’t cause me any grief at all to do so.”

  Antony got to his feet. “I’ll tell Fulvia,” he said.

  “You can’t!” gasped Lepidus. “You can’t enter the city!”

  “I can do whatever I like!” roared Antony, unleashing the lion. “Leave it to an icicle like you to tell her? I’d sooner be dead! That’s a great woman!”

  “I must forbid it, Antonius. Your imperium!”

  Antony grinned. “What imperium, Lepidus? Caesar gave it to me without any authority to do so beyond his own confidence that one day he’ll be able to make it real. Until he does—until I receive my lex curiata— I’ll come and go as I please!”

  He’d always liked her, always thought her the final touch in Clodius’s world. Sitting at the base of old Gaius Marius’s statue after that terrific riot in the Forum—lying on a couch, adding her mite to Clodius’s machinations—shrewdly tempering Clodius’s craziness by playing on it— not so much transferring her affections to Curio as willing herself to live and love again—and the only woman in Rome who didn’t have an unfaithful bone in her delectable body. The gall of Lepidus, to apostrophize her as “ghastly”! And he married to one of Servilia’s brood!

  “Marcus, I loved him!” she repeated.

  “Yes, I know. He was a lucky man.”

  The tears began to fall; Fulvia rocked. Torn with pity, Atticus drew up his chair closer and cradled her head against his chest. His eyes met Antony’s; Antony relinquished her hand and her care to Atticus, and went away.

  Twice widowed in three years. For all her proud heritage and her strength, the granddaughter of Gaius Gracchus couldn’t bear to look at a life suddenly emptied of purpose. Was this how Gaius Gracchus had felt in the grove of Lucina beneath the Janiculum eighty-two years ago? His programs toppled, his adherents dead, his enemies baying for his blood. Well, they hadn’t got that. He killed himself. They had had to be satisfied with lopping off his head and refusing his body burial.

  “Help me die, Atticus!” she mourned.

  “And leave your children orphans? Is that all you think of Clodius? Of Curio? And what of little Curio?”

  “I want to die!” she moaned. “Just let me die!”

  “I can’t, Fulvia. Death is the end of all things. You have children to live for.”

  *

  The Senate’s comprising none but Caesar’s adherents (or the careful neutrals like Philippus, Lucius Piso and Cotta) meant that it was no longer capable of opposing Caesar’s wishes. Confident and persuasive, Lepidus went to work to fulfill Caesar’s orders.

  “I do not like alluding to a time best forgotten,” he said to that thin and apprehensive body, “beyond drawing your attention to the fact that Rome in the aftermath of the battle at the Colline Gate was utterly exhausted and completely incapable of governing. Lucius Cornelius Sulla was appointed Dictator for one reason: he represented Rome’s only chance to recover. Things needed to be done which could not be done in an atmosphere of debate, of many different opinions on how they ought to be done. From time to time in the history of the Republic, it has been necessary to hand the welfare of this city and her empire into the care of one man alone. The Dictator. The strong man with Rome’s best interests at heart. The pity of it is that our most recent experience of the Dictator was Sulla. Who did not step down at the end of the obligatory six months, nor respect the lives and property of his country’s most influential citizens. He proscribed.”

  The House listened gloomily, wondering how Lepidus thought he co
uld ever persuade a tribal Assembly to ratify the decree he was clearly going to ask the Senate to hand down. Well, they were Caesar’s men; they had no choice in it. But the tribal Assemblies were dominated by the knights, the very people whom Sulla had chosen for his proscription victims.

  “Caesar,” said Lepidus in tones of absolute conviction, “is no Sulla. His only aim is to establish good government and heal the wounds of this disgraceful exodus, the disappearance of Gnaeus Pompeius and his tame senators. Business is languishing, economic affairs are a shambles, both debtors and creditors are suffering. Consider the career of Gaius Caesar, and you will realize that this is no bigoted fool, no partisan preferrer. What has to be done, he will do. In the only way possible—by being appointed Dictator. It is not without precedent that I, a mere praetor, ask for this decree. As you well know. But we need elections, we need stability, we need that strong hand. Not my hand, Conscript Fathers! I do not so presume. We need to appoint Gaius Julius Caesar the Dictator of Rome.”

  He got his decree without difficulty, and took it to the Popular Assembly, which was the whole People gathered in its tribes, patricians as well as plebeians. He ought perhaps to have gone to the whole People in its Centuries, but the Centuriate Assembly was far too weighted in favor of the knights. Those who would oppose the appointment of a dictator most bitterly.

  The move was very carefully timed; it was early September, and Rome was filled with country visitors in town for the games, the ludi Romani. Both the curule aediles, responsible for staging the games, had fled to Pompey. Nothing daunted, Lepidus as temporary ruler of the city appointed two senators to take their place for the purpose of the games, and funded them from Caesar’s private moneys. Harping on the fact that the absent curule aediles had abrogated their duty to honor Jupiter Optimus Maximus, and that Caesar had stepped into the breach.

  When there were sufficient country people in Rome, a tribal Assembly could not be manipulated by the First Class of voters; rural voters, despite their reasonable prosperity, tended to want the men whose names they knew—and the thirty-one rural tribes constituted a massive majority. Pompey had done himself no good in their eyes by speaking openly of proscriptions Italia-wide, whereas Caesar had behaved with clemency and great affection for country people. They liked Caesar. They believed in Caesar. And they voted in the Popular Assembly to appoint Caesar the Dictator of Rome.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” said Atticus to his fellow plutocrats. “Caesar is a conservative man, not a radical. He won’t cancel debts and he won’t proscribe. Wait and see.”

  3

  At the end of October, Caesar arrived in Placentia with his army, secure in the knowledge that he was now Dictator. The governor of Italian Gaul, Marcus Crassus Junior, met him there.

  “All’s well, save for Gaius Antonius’s fiasco in Illyricum,” said Crassus, and sighed. “I wish I could say that was a freak mischance, but I can’t. Why on earth he chose to base himself on an island, I don’t know. And the local people were so supportive! They adore you, therefore any legate of yours has to be worthwhile. Would you believe that a group of them built a raft and tried to help fend Octavius’s fleet off? They hadn’t anything beyond spears and stones—no ballistae, no catapultae. All day they took what Octavius threw at them. When night came, they committed suicide rather than fall into enemy hands.”

  Caesar and his legates listened grimly.

  “I wish,” said Caesar savagely, “that we Romans didn’t hold the family in such reverence! I knew Gaius Antonius would manage to stuff up whatever command I gave him! The pity of it is that wherever I sent him, things would have gone the same way. Well, I can bear losing him. Curio is a tragedy.”

  “We’ve lost Africa, certainly,” said Trebonius.

  “And will have to do without Africa until Pompeius is beaten.”

  “His navy is going to be a nuisance, I predict,” said Fabius.

  “Yes,” said Caesar, tight-lipped. “It’s time Rome admitted that the best ships are all built at the eastern end of Our Sea. Where Pompeius is obtaining his fleets, while we’re at the mercy of Italians and Spaniards. I took every ship Ahenobarbus left behind at Massilia, but the Massiliotes don’t build much better than the shipyards in Narbo, Genua and Pisae. Or Novum Carthago.”

  “The Liburnians of Illyricum build a beautiful little galley,” said Crassus. “Very fast.”

  “I know. Unfortunately they’ve done it in the past to equip pirates; it’s not a well-organized industry.” Caesar shrugged. “Well, we shall see. At least we’re aware of our deficiencies.” He looked at Marcus Crassus enquiringly. “What of preparations to give all Italian Gauls the full citizenship?”

  “Just about done, Caesar. I appreciate your sending me Lucius Rubrius. He conducted a brilliant census.”

  “Will I be able to legislate it when I’m next in Rome?”

  “Give us another month, and yes.”

  “That’s excellent, Crassus. I’ve put my Lucius Roscius onto the Roman end, which means I ought to be able to have the whole matter finished by the end of the year. They’ve waited since the Italian War for their citizenships, and it’s twenty years since I first gave them my word that I’d enfranchise them. Yes, high time.”

  *

  There were eight legions encamped around Placentia—the new Sixth, the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, Twelfth and Thirteenth. The bulk of Caesar’s Gallic army. The men of the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth and Tenth had been under the Eagles now for ten years, and were at the peak of their fighting ability; in age they were between twenty-seven and twenty-eight, and had been enlisted in Italian Gaul. The Eleventh and Twelfth were a little younger, and the Thirteenth, whose men were only twenty-one years old, was a mere baby by comparison. The Sixth, recruited earlier in this year and still unblooded, was a legion of shavelings looking very forward to some real fighting. As Caesar had remarked to Gaius Trebonius, his was an army composed of Italian Gauls, many of whom were from the far side of the Padus. Well, shortly these men could no longer be dismissed as non-citizens by certain senatorial fools.

  Recruitment was flourishing as Italian Gaul across the Padus realized that its forty-year battle to attain the full citizenship was over, and Caesar was its hero. He wanted twelve legions to take east to fight Pompey; Mamurra, Ventidius and their staff had labored to achieve Caesar’s figure, and informed him when he reached Placentia that there would indeed be a Fifteenth, Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth by the time he was ready to ship them to Brundisium.

  Serene in the knowledge that his veteran troops belonged to him completely, Caesar went about the business of a governor. He paid a special visit to his colony at Novum Comum, where Marcus Marcellus had ordered a citizen flogged two years before, and personally paid the man compensation at a public meeting in the town marketplace. From there he visited the people of Marius’s old colony at Eporedia, dropped in to see how things were at the big and thriving town of Cremona, and toyed with the idea of going further east along the foothills of the Alps to give out the news of impending citizenship. This was a great coup, for it meant that the large population still disenfranchised in Italian Gaul would, when citizens, come into his clientship.

  A courier came from Gaius Trebonius in Placentia, demanding that Caesar return there immediately.

  “Trouble,” said Trebonius curtly when Caesar arrived.

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “The Ninth is disaffected.”

  For the first time in their long association, Trebonius saw the General bereft of words, stunned.

  “It can’t be,” he said slowly. “Not my boys!”

  “I’m afraid it is.”

  “Why?”

  “I’d rather they told you. There’s a deputation coming here this afternoon.”

  It consisted of the Ninth’s senior centurions, and was led by the chief centurion of the Seventh Cohort, one Quintus Carfulenus. A Picentine, not an Italian Gaul. Perhaps, thought Caesar, face flinty, Carfulenus was in
the clientele of Pompey. If so, he gave no sign of it.

  The General received the men, ten in all, clad in full armor and seated in his curule chair; on his head he wore a chaplet of oak leaves to remind them—but how could the Ninth forget?—that he too was no mean soldier in the front line.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “We’re fed up,” said Carfulenus.

  Caesar looked not at Carfulenus but at his primipilus centurion, Sextus Cloatius, and his pilus prior centurion, Lucius Aponius. Two good men, yet very ill at ease; Carfulenus, a hard-bitten man of forty, was ten years their senior in age. Not satisfactory, thought Caesar, seeing an unsuspected problem for the first time. He would have to order his legates to examine the pecking order in their legions’ centurions. Quintus Carfulenus, a senior man yet eleven grades junior to Cloatius and Aponius, was the dominant influence in this legion, under the command of Sulpicius Rufus.

  Behind Caesar’s set face and cold eyes a turmoil seethed; of grief, awful anger, incredulity. He had never believed this could happen to him— never believed for one moment that any of his beloved boys would cease to love him, plot to bring him down. Not a humbling experience, to find that his confidence had been misplaced; rather a disillusionment of huge proportions, in the wake of which roared an iron determination to reverse the process, to make the Ninth his again, to strike Carfulenus and any who genuinely felt as he did down to the dust. Literally, dust. Dead.

  “What are you fed up with, Carfulenus?” he asked.

  “This war. Or better say, this non-war. No fighting worth a lead denarius. I mean, that’s what soldiering is all about. The fighting. The plunder. But so far all we’ve done is march until we drop, freeze in wet tents, and go hungry.”