by Cass Morris
The tribune then had the singularly unpleasant experience of a hundred pairs of eyes turning in his direction simultaneously. “You interpose your veto on what?” snarled General Strato, rising from his bench.
“On— On discussion of this topic.” The young man gulped.
“Tribune, there is no legislative motion being put to the Senate,” said the interim censor. “Therefore, there is nothing for you to veto.”
“But—”
“Tribune,” the censor said, more forcefully despite the reediness of his aged voice, “the very reason this body decided to delay determination of the Iberian matter until December was so that we could gather information and begin discussions, should we deem preparation necessary. Young Vitellius’s report has made that matter simpler for us.”
“We also wanted to wait for a full quorum to debate the matter,” Rabirus corrected, “which meant waiting until after the elections.”
Galerius stood. “The decision of whether or not to go to war belongs to the Centuriate Assembly,” he said, “not to this august body. With this new information, I suspect they will make that decision quickly.”
“Until then,” Rabirus interposed, rising as well, “we have no cause to discuss it here!”
Galerius turned slowly to face Rabirus. “With respect, sir, that was not precisely what I was going to suggest.”
“Nonetheless,” Rabirus said, squaring his posture against Galerius’s, “it is sensible. We should not waste our time discussing an eventuality that, gods willing, will never come to pass.”
Sempronius and Strato were on their feet in the same instant, which prompted Buteo to enter the verbal fray. His strident tones set off a chain of shouting and jostling, with Marcus Autronius rising to plead for calm.
Feeling a headache start to pinch at his temples, Galerius sat back down.
XXVI
“Fools, the whole lot of them,” Sempronius said, his voice dangerously low, as he sat across a couch from Vitellia Latona later that night. They were at a dinner party thrown by the Crispiniae, where they were not the only ones discussing the Iberian news in feverish whispers. Aulus Vitellius’s attention had been much in demand, but Sempronius had immediately sought out Latona, as desirous of finding some solace in her brilliant emerald eyes as he was of hearing her opinions. “What harm does it do to talk of a thing? They hinge their whole lives on . . . on inaction!” Such a thought was abhorrent to Sempronius Tarren. Offensive, even, anathema to the mandate of his soul.
Latona smiled mirthlessly. “Sempronius, you should know better than anyone what treacherous little creatures words can be. Of course they fear them.”
Aula, who was sitting next to her sister but had been turned backwards in conversation with Proculus Crispinius, swiveled back about. “What are we talking about?”
“Gaius’s letter,” Latona said.
“Ooh, I was so proud when I heard what Father did, storming in all hellfire,” Aula said, popping a grape in her mouth. “Word of that will spread to the people, many of whom would stand in favor of the campaign. They’re already talking about it. Pass word through the macellum of the goods to be brought home—wine, metal, slaves, whatever you think will have them salivating the most—and they’ll stand by your side in a heartbeat.”
Sempronius arched an eyebrow, impressed by Aula’s grasp of the situation. “And how are you aware of their preferences, Lady Aula?”
Aula swallowed her grape and grinned. “I have my ways. I’ve never found that it hurts to keep an ear open to what whispers drift up from the valleys.”
“She’s being deliberately vague,” Latona said, nudging Aula’s foot with her toe. “She has a contact in the Subura, a wine-merchant’s wife who’s a distant relation to us.”
“Ooh, how dare you give away my sources?” Aula pretended to scowl at her sister, then threw a grape, which Latona snatched out of the air.
“You’d better hope our hosts didn’t see that,” Latona said, mock-chiding.
“You hear that the plebs believe it, then,” Sempronius asked, “what’s said about the land in Iberia?” He had been sounding out his own contacts among wine-sellers, forgers, and foundries, but it was always advantageous to have information confirmed from multiple sources.
“Some do. Some are uncertain of the risk involved.” Aula glanced around the room, then jerked her chin in the direction of a pair of men talking to Appius Crispinius in a corner: an ambitious up-and-comer, Naevius, and his brother. “But men like the Naeviae, who missed out on the land grab in Pannonia—they’d be willing to have Aven take the chance. And, of course, where Aven colonizes, someone has to do the building. Plenty of work for our brickmakers and architects. If there’s marble alongside the metals our brother says you military men will be tripping over yourselves to get at, so much the better.”
Sempronius wondered how many people, glancing at Aula Vitellia, would guess that under bouncing copper curls lay a mind capable of calculating the intricacies of international trade, supply and demand of goods, and the political ramifications of economic fluctuations. He looked at Latona, clever and caring and more talented than she would let herself realize, then at little Alhena, in whom he sensed untested depths, and he had to admire what the Vitellian family could produce. ‘Given the right chance, these women could take over the city.’
All three women were admirable and intriguing, but Latona was the one Sempronius could hardly drag his attention away from. A thoughtful expression sat on her lovely face while her sister chattered. “The Optimates are hardly ones to stick up their noses at profit,” she said. “It’s a bit of a wonder they aren’t scrambling to claim their piece of it in Iberia.”
“Ahh, but there is risk involved,” Sempronius said, leaning towards her. “And the men who are not willing to take the risk are eager to stop anyone more intrepid from benefiting by such temerity. After all, if we brave sort march off to glory and gain, their choices are dismal indeed: stay at home and risk being called cowards, or go on campaign and undoubtedly prove themselves so at the first engagement.” The sharp glint was still in his eyes, but there was also a teasing light to his features now, and both women laughed.
Mirth left Latona swiftly, though. “Sempronius,” she said, “what of Gaius’s report about this . . . this Ekialde’s dark magic?”
“I can tell you they were not as well-received in the Senate as his more concrete information regarding the allied tribes,” Sempronius said. “Accusations of blood magic and necromancy are common smears against our enemies, after all.”
“But they may yet be true,” Latona said.
Sempronius nodded allowance of that possibility—particularly considering what had just happened to Felix. “There are more ways than ours of practicing magic, and we know very little about the native Iberian methods. Learning more about it will be one of the benefits of a conquest—assuming, of course, that we don’t kill all of their practitioners before they can tell us anything.”
“There are many who would say we should know as little as possible about it,” Aula pointed out. “That we should kill them before their methods can infect ours.”
Sempronius exhaled in a little huff, remembering a speech of Buteo’s from before the Dictatorship, excoriating Numidian strains of magic that had not yet assimilated with the Aventan system. “Yes, there are many who would say so,” he said, “and I am hard-pressed to think of a more wasteful point of view.”
“These fool men consider that which is different to be dangerous,” Aula said as she reached for more grapes.
“Exactly so.” Sempronius sighed; it was the sort of attitude he had fought for many years already, and that he knew he would spend the rest of his life fighting. Men like Buteo clung to the way things had always been, oblivious to the influence of a changing world, seemingly unaware that the noble old system they strove to uphold had already begun to fall around
their ears. It had been crumbling for generations before they had even been born. The first cracks had shown as soon as Aven began to expand outside the Truscum region, setting its sights on the waving wheat of Alalia, the vital ports of Sicilia, and the rich and ragged coastline of Ionia. Yet the Optimates saw every change not as an opportunity, but as an insult to the mos maiorum, a challenge to the gods and their ancestors. It infuriated Sempronius, that they could be so blind to reality, so stubbornly impractical.
At that moment, Herennius appeared at Latona’s elbow, taking abrupt hold of her arm. “Wife, I require your assistance.” His eyes were not on Latona, but rather on Sempronius, as he spoke. “I want to talk to Old Rufilius about some land he has going up Liguria way, and the goat doesn’t appear in a good temper tonight. See if you can’t charm him into a better mood.”
Latona stared blankly at him, then glanced back at Sempronius and her sister. “You will excuse me.” As Latona rose, shaking off Herennius’s grasp, Sempronius witnessed several submerged communications. Herennius’s lip curled in disdain for his wife’s powers, even as he was willing to make use of them. The contradiction was naked, ugly. In Latona, he could see a swelling resentment—not only for Herennius’s officious behavior, but also for the embarrassment of being commanded to perform on cue. ‘A man like him should tremble even to approach a wonder like her, and yet he treats her like chattel.’
Aula slipped over to claim her sister’s vacated seat, noticing how Sempronius’s eyes followed Latona’s retreating form. “She’s quite an asset for him,” Aula said, too casually.
“It was an advantageous match for Herennius, to be sure,” Sempronius replied.
Astute Aula did not miss the tension in his jaw, nor the delay with which his gaze returned to her. “Oh, yes, in many ways,” she continued, her voice pitched high and airy. “Not to aggrandize myself, but my family is of quite good blood, excellent social status—a fine thing for a patrician with provincial roots. It opens many doors for him that might be closed otherwise, and her gifts help give a little extra push. In return, she has a measure of safety and security in an uncertain world.” She sighed, twirling one of her ringlet curls around her finger. “Still, sometimes I do wonder . . .”
She let the thought trail off, then turned her attention back to Proculus. Though Sempronius knew perfectly well what she was doing, the manipulation still had the intended effect. He wondered, as he had before, and as Aula intended him to remember now, if the benefits of the match for Latona in any way matched the obvious drawbacks—and what might be done to alter her circumstances more favorably.
* * *
The leading Optimates also met that night to discuss Aulus Vitellius’s news, in Rabirus’s neatly-ordered triclinium. “No sense of— of dignity! Any of them!” Buteo roared. “The Vitellians are all rabid Popularists, but I expected better of Galerius Orator than to support his nonsense. Strato with his constant war-mongering, the Autroniae and the Naeviae with their common blood polluting the Senate. And Sempronius Tarren. That man!”
“He’s shameless,” Gratianus put in. “I’m sure he means nothing good by it. No demagogue ever does.”
“Demagogue! Yes! Exactly!” Buteo’s toga flapped about his bony form as he gesticulated. Everyone else was reclining, finishing off the last plates of dinner, but Buteo had not been able to stay still all night. “Say that word in the Forum, and often, Gratianus.”
“I do,” Gratianus said mildly, leaning back against a stack of pillows and settling his hands over his generous midsection. As the Optimates’ best chance at a consulship, he had been carefully governing his rhetoric in public speeches—though Buteo often hectored him to show less restraint.
“It’s why we must protect the people of Aven from him,” Buteo continued. “It’s up to us, the good men of Aven, to make the weighty decisions they cannot.”
“Oh, save the speech for the Forum, Buteo,” Cornicen said. “It’ll do more good there.”
“They have no respect for the mos maiorum,” Rabirus said. “It’s what comes of allowing all this foreign influence into the city. It dilutes the proper Aventan standards.” Rabirus and Buteo both viewed the Republic’s founders as nothing less than divinely inspired, led by the gods, not by whim. Why else would Aven be so different a place than any other society, different even from those Athaecan city-states or Tyrian lands where so many of the first settlers had come from? The city thrived because it followed the mandates of the gods in its organization; to challenge that was sacrilege, and would doubtless bring the city to ruin.
A shift of fabric in the corner caught Rabirus’s eye: his son, fidgeting on the lowest couch. Lucretius the Younger was twenty-two, still studying the law in preparation for his eventual career in the Senate, but his friends were all mad for war and its supposed glories. ‘Too impatient to earn acclaim the proper way, through quaestorships and the courts. No, no, they all want the coronets of honor to propel their careers.’
That thought served to provide Rabirus’s next topic of condemnation. “What a shame it is,” he voiced, adjusting himself on his chair, “that the legions have become so—so egalitarian.”
Buteo eagerly picked up the thread. “Yes. Yes! There was a time when a man had to be fit to serve, had to have quality. He had to be able to provide his own arms for the defense of the state, had to have some investment in it. Now! Ohhh, now, thanks to fifty years’ degradation, any man can enter the army and find his way to glory, never minding his own wealth, never minding what it costs the state to keep him!”
“Any free man,” corrected Cornicen “Be that fair, at least.”
“But for how long?” Gratianus said. “How long before we strike down that barrier as well?”
“Don’t be absurd,” Cornicen replied. “There’s no one in Aven—no, not even Sempronius Tarren, Buteo, don’t give me that look—who would be that disgraceful. We’re not Parthian potentates, to set slaves to do our fighting for us.”
“For how long?” Buteo said, more forcefully. “A hundred years ago, it was unthinkable that the shiftless men of the Head Count be allowed to stand in our defense. Today it is unthinkable that slaves might do so. What will be left to be unthinkable in another hundred years?” Rubbing at his beak of a nose, Buteo huffed. “We should never have gotten involved in the Iberian peninsula to begin with. It’s too dangerous, all this expansion.” Buteo pounded his fist on the table. “Maritima, Alalia, Sicilia—What do we need with those lands?”
“Grain,” Cornicen said, his even voice a stark contrast to Buteo’s stentorian echoes. “Wheat. Flax. Oil.” He laughed, and Buteo glared. “Good heavens, Buteo, friend, don’t tell me you don’t see the value in that.”
“Dangerous,” Rabirus said. Though his voice was quieter than Buteo’s, there was a darkness in it that warned he was wearying of debate. “Every time we expand, it brings new peoples into the city, and we don’t need them. They unsettle things, they overcrowd, they give the Head Count ideas.”
Cornicen smiled, a little too serenely. “Ah. Truly, a cataclysm in the making.”
“I believe our friend’s point,” Gratianus said, seeing the glint in Rabirus’s eyes and rushing to speak first, “is that we could do without Iberia just fine. Let the Tyrians have it, or the barbarians, if the Tyrians can’t defend it.”
“The Tyrians?” Cornicen asked, laughter still in his voice, though more incredulous than genuinely amused. “What Tyrians? Old Tyre is empty and New Tyre never got back on its feet after the Numidian Wars. The men in their colonies are as much Iberian as Tyrian—and as much Aventan, in some cases!”
“That’s another problem with the whole mess!” Buteo railed. “And it goes back to the legions again. We bring in all these men, these men who have nothing, no property, no land, but when they are discharged, oh, then they must have something!”
“Unnecessary, when good men serve in the armies,” Rabirus said. “B
ut when it’s this rabble, we must find land to reward them with.”
“And where do we find land?” Buteo said. “Not in Truscum, by the gods, at least we haven’t sunk that far yet, to give away our homeland. But where, then? How do we find it? By conquering! Eliminate one problem, and we could quite eliminate the other, I believe.”
Gratianus strove to retain a neutral expression, caught between his admiration for the principles Buteo and Rabirus espoused and his all-too-acute awareness of the lucrative opportunities that an Iberian campaign would provide. Cornicen, though, just shook his head. “It’s not that I don’t see what you mean, Buteo,” he said. “Your trouble, friend, is that you were born two hundred years too late. Your virtues are so noble, so correct—but so impractical.”
“Then think of this,” Rabirus said, striding swiftly towards Cornicen, “Do you want men like Sempronius to have such power over the armies? Do you want to arm men who will be more loyal to their Popularist commanders than to the state?”
That actually earned a moment of quiet regard from Cornicen. “You think he would do as Ocella did?”
Buteo opened his mouth, but Rabirus held up a hand to forestall him. Pragmatic Cornicen would be moved by rational arguments, not by Buteo’s righteous yowling. “I fear it. His rhetoric about equality, about expanding rights and partnering with lesser nations for mutual good—these are ploys, to put more power into his hands. We have seen this before, and the nation barely survived.”
Cornicen shifted the weight of his toga higher on his shoulder. “Survival is . . . an interesting term, to apply to nations,” he said. “I know what you fear from men like Sempronius, but I wonder if you have his measure correctly. There is a simple truth, and he may just be addressing it differently than you would: Our world is getting bigger, whether we like it or not.”