It was a familiar, comforting scene, one I had enjoyed most days of my life. Had the heat and smells of summer contributed to the ambience, it might not have been so pleasant but, just then, it was the Forum the way I liked to see it. However, somewhere out there, perhaps in the Forum, certainly within the city or its suburbs, an assassin moved freely, concealed as a shark is concealed beneath the surface of the sea.
“What next?” I echoed. Over the roof of the Temple of Saturn I eyed the towering façade of the Archive, its rows of arches on three levels seeming from this angle to support the temples of Juno the Warner and of Jupiter Best and Greatest, which watched benignly over all. A pair of eagles circled high above the temple rooftops. Doubtless many idlers were reading an omen into the flight of these birds, despite the fact that eagles flew over the capitol all the time. “What, indeed?”
I had just espied a little knot of men gathered beneath a statue of Caesar and recognized them as some of the year’s tribunes of the Plebs. They were arguing loudly and drawing a minor crowd of their own. These men were understandably peeved that year. Their office was one of the most powerful, with the authority to introduce legislation to the Plebeian Assembly and to veto acts of the Senate, but not with a dictator in power. Now if they wanted to introduce a law it hadn’t a hope of passing unless it was proposed first by Caesar and their power of veto was suspended. They were barely even time servers.
“This looks like amusement in the making,” I said. “Let’s see.” So we made our way toward the disputatious legislators. They were growing red-faced, and one of them, a beak-nosed individual who looked vaguely familiar, was waving a gilded object that appeared to be made from thin metal. I barged in as if I had some business there. “What’s going on, gentlemen?” I asked jovially.
The beak-nosed one glared at me for a moment. “Oh, it’s you. You’re just another of Caesar’s lackeys. Stay out of this.”
I stuck my right hand into a fold of my tunic and slipped the bronze cestus over my knuckles, just in case. “No need to call names, ah, Flavus, is it?” At last I recognized him as Caius Caesetius Flavus, a tribune decidedly in the anti-Caesarian camp, meaning he was a man with few allies. One of these, another tribune named Marullus, now spoke up.
“You should have died with the rest of your family, Metellus. They were better men.”
I decided the bridge of his nose would do nicely for a target. One smack for him, then a half-turn and lay another one on Flavus’s jaw. I bet myself that I could put them both on the pavement in the same moment, but this time Hermes played peacekeeper.
“What’s that thing you’re waving around?” he asked.
Flavus held it up. “Last night someone put a crown on the head of Caesar’s statue!”
“What of it?” I asked. “The Senate has granted Caesar the right to adorn his statues with the Civic Crown and the Siege Crown.” I gestured around the Forum, where a minor crowd of Caesar’s statues stood in prominent places. He really was overdoing it in those days.
“This is not one of the crowns of honor,” Marullus hissed. “It is a diadem, a royal crown!”
“Put it back,” yelled yet another tribune. I did not recognize this one. You hardly saw them in the Senate since they lost their veto.
“Shut your mouth, Cinna!” Flavus bellowed. Cinna charged and for a while a good-sized brawl erupted at the base of the statue, with numerous bystanders taking part. Hermes and I kept out of it. A tattered golden object came flying from the pile of struggling men and Hermes caught it adroitly. I examined it and found it to be made of gilded parchment, not metal.
Eventually the disputants were separated. Flavus and Marullus were taken off to their houses, much the worse for wear. Cinna sat on the steps blotting at the blood running freely from his nose. I handed him a kerchief and he pressed it to his nose, tilting his head back for a while. When the bleeding stopped he stood.
“Many thanks, Senator Metellus.”
“Think nothing of it. You’re not Cornelius Cinna, I know him. Are you Cinna the poet?”
“Helvius Cinna, and yes, I flatter myself that I write verses of some merit. Come, I need a drink, and I’ll stand you to some wine as well.”
“Bacchus lays his curse on a man who turns down a free drink,” I said. “Lead on.”
We went down an alleyway that led to a small square with a fountain in its center. The tavern had outdoor tables covered by arbors that provided shade in summer. Just then the sun overhead and the buildings on all four sides kept the temperature tolerable for dining or drinking in the open.
He ordered a pitcher with some snacks to go with it, and we filled our cups, poured a libation on the ground, and pledged one another’s health. It was the raw red stuff of the country, a welcome change from the rather effete vintages I had been imbibing of late. At least so I told myself. The fact was, I would drink just about anything. Still do, for that matter. The girl came back with a large bowl of crisp-fried nuts and dried peas, liberally salted.
“I know you of course, Senator Metellus,” Cinna said, his voice slightly distorted by his swollen nasal passages. His nose, doubtless handsome in its usual state, was rapidly assuming the shape and color of a ripe plum. “I know that you are married to Caesar’s niece, and that you’ve been his friend since you were both boys.”
I took a long drink, pondering how to play this. It was a distinct exaggeration to style us boyhood friends. I barely knew him until I was in my twenties. He was about ten years older. We had worked closely together many times in the years since, though. To a recently arrived man like this obscure Cinna, it might well seem that Caesar and I were old cronies.
“Caesar trusts no other man the way he trusts my patron,” Hermes said with smarmy sincerity. He had already decided the best approach and I thought it best to play along.
“That’s good to know,” he said. “Caesar has a great many toadies, but only a few true supporters.”
“Hence your lack of objection to the crown on the statue,” I observed.
He chuckled. “I put it there.”
This was interesting. “And you would have no objection to a real crown on the dictator’s head?”
“Why not? The Republic of the old days is dead, anyone can see that. Since Marius it’s been one strongman after another taking dictatorial power, whether or not he held the title. When there’s none in power, the rest are all fighting to gain that power. It’s messy and it’s stupid and destructive. Caesar is the first man of true talent and genius to pick up the iron rod and wield it over lesser men. Why not let him have the throne and crown to go with it? We had kings in the past, and they were good ones. It wasn’t until we had Etruscans for kings that we rejected monarchy.”
“Feeling runs deep against unlimited one-man power, especially if it can be inherited.” I munched on some nuts.
“But that’s foolish,” he objected. “A republic worked well enough when Rome was a little city-state like dozens of others in Italy. A panel of wealthy farmers could rule well enough in those days, when all their retainers lived within a day’s march of the City. But now Rome rules a world-spanning empire and our provinces are so far away that a man sent out to govern travels so long to get to his province he practically has to turn around on arrival to be back in Rome for election time. It’s foolish!”
“Very true,” Hermes said, nodding. “He should have all the trappings of a king, so he can deal with foreign kings on an equal footing.”
“Right,” Cinna said. He smiled slyly. “In fact, this is supposed to be secret, but the whole city will know about it soon enough. I have the bill all drawn up in legal fashion, I’m just waiting for Caesar to give me the word to introduce it—”
“Tell us!” I pleaded. He looked satisfied as only a man who holds a secret can. I slugged down some wine and tossed a handful of the snacks into my mouth.
“Well, this is for your ears only, right?” We nodded with wide eyes like a pair of idiots. “All right. This bill, wh
ich I will bring before the Plebeian Assembly, empowers Caesar to marry any woman he wishes, and as many of them as it pleases him to marry, simultaneously, not sequentially.”
There is a great art to not choking on a mouthful of dried peas and nuts when news like this gets dropped on one. Fortunately, I am a master of this art. It has saved my dignity at many a political banquet. I continued chewing and turned that into a nod.
“Makes sense,” Hermes said.
I swallowed. “Absolutely. Kings do that sort of thing all the time.”
“It’s traditional for sealing alliances in the east,” Cinna pointed out, “and Caesar plans further conquests in that direction. Alexander had no problem with marrying some kinglet’s daughter when he needed an alliance.”
“And we all know Caesar has taken Alexander as his model,” Hermes said with an air of great wisdom. He was laying it on a bit thick, but Helvius Cinna seemed like the sort of man who wouldn’t notice such a thing. Typical poet.
“Has he given you any idea when he wants you to bring this before the consilium? I asked him.
“No, but I think it can’t be much longer. He will be leaving for his Asian campaign soon.”
We finished our wine and traded a few more pleasantries and parted with hearty handclasps and tokens of good friendship. Without exchanging a word Hermes and I walked down to the embankment by the side of the Tiber, a handsome park above the retaining wall that had been built by the aediles after the last big flood. There we found a fine marble bench between shade-trees and sat, watching the river flow by.
“All right,” Hermes said at length, “what’s this mean? I can guess part of it but there must be more.”
“What have you guessed?” I asked him.
“That he’s going to marry Cleopatra. She’ll be a legal wife, not just a concubine. I don’t know the Egyptian custom, but with the legions to back him, that will make him pharaoh as far as we’re concerned.”
“Yes, and how did the pharaohs keep it in the family, so to speak?”
“They married their sisters so as not to sully the royal bloodline, but Caesar has no living sisters and his only daughter is dead.”
“So who does that leave?” I prodded.
He thought. “Atia?”
“Yes, his niece. Then her brat, Octavius, becomes young Caesar, heir not only to his fortune but to his power. He will have our empire in his hands on Caesar’s death.”
“Then Servilia and all the others are out.”
“Under this law he can marry her if he feels like it, but Servilia will not be a cowife. Not to Cleopatra or anybody else.”
“Will people put up with this?” Hermes wondered. “The purple robe, the red boots, even the crown are just baubles, but overturning the custom of centuries and the power structure founded by the first Brutus, that’s different.”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “The commons love him, and part of that is seeing how he’s humbled the aristocracy. I’m not sure many of them see much difference between being ruled by a king and being ruled by a Senate composed of the likes of Lucius Cinna and Brutus and Cassius, aristocrats who have always treated them with contempt. It’s not as if their votes really count for much. Caesar has given them splendor and foreign conquest and public banquets and the grain dole. They might just back him in this.”
Hermes was quiet for a while. Then said, “Do you think Caesar has gone insane?”
“If so, he wouldn’t be the first to rise to absolute power and lose his grip on reality as a result.” I got up. “Then again maybe this Helvius Cinna, poet, is lying. We can always hope so.”
I dismissed Hermes to go snoop in the messengers’ tavern, little hoping that he would return sober. For a while I sat and watched the river. It was a familiar, soothing sight, as the Forum had been. Citizens crossed the busy bridges or leaned on their balustrades, brooding on the water just like me. Ducks paddled about while men with poles and lines fished for dinner. More serious fishermen were out in boats with nets and barges plied the water. Pleasure craft sailed about, carefully staying upstream of the sewer outlets.
While I watched the river I thought about Egypt. The land of the Nile, Cleopatra’s kingdom, was incredibly rich yet the Ptolemies, the Macedonian usurpers to the ancient land, were often penniless. This was partly due to their own fecklessness but also because Egypt’s vast wealth, product of its incredibly fertile land, went into the coffers of its priests and temples. Even the greatest pharaohs and their Macedonian successors had been unable to break the stranglehold of the priesthoods of the many beast-headed gods of that superstitious, benighted land. I have always been grateful that Romans would never submit to the rule of priests.
In truth, Cleopatra, last descendant of that degenerate line, was ruler only of Alexandria and much of the Delta. Those alone made her richer than all other monarchs save a Great King of Persia, but she would have been ten times richer had the produce of the interior been hers.
Did Caesar truly aspire to be the first pharaoh in more than five hundred years? If so, he would have all that wealth because unlike any Egyptian or Greek he would not hesitate to make those priests pay up. We Romans respect other peoples’ gods, but that has never stopped us from looting their temples, even those of gods to whom we pay the highest honors. Sulla and Pompey had plundered temples all over Greece and the East, their excuse being that they were collecting from rebellious or resisting cities, not from the gods themselves. They left the images and insignia of the gods alone but took everything else of value. No Roman had even that much respect for the ridiculous deities of Egypt.
How much ambition was it possible for one man to have? To surpass Alexander in conquest, even to surpass Romulus in prestige and honor, these were ambitious enough. Romulus had been deified. Did Caesar aim that high? Did he think to place himself among the immortal gods? The thought sent a shudder through me. This is what the Greeks call “hubris” and its consequences are famously terrible, not just for the offender but for the whole community. This is why a triumphing general has a slave standing behind him in his chariot to whisper from time to time, “Remember that you are mortal.” I am not superstitious, but there is such a thing as tempting the gods too far.
From the river I made my way back to the Forum. It was as good a place as any to be, since I had run out of leads to investigate. The political gossip being bandied about from end to end of the Forum was no less lively for the overbearing presence of a dictator. There were plenty of lesser offices that were still desirable because they were too small for such a man’s attention, others that were coveted for their prestige.
Consul was one of these. Though the dictatorship usurped the consular powers, Caesar kept the office alive. Each year, he was always one of the consuls, with some chosen politician acting as his colleague. At that date his colleague as co-consul was Antonius. There was much talk of who would take Caesar’s place as suffect consul when he left for Syria.
It seemed, if I was collecting the right gossip, that Caesar had chosen Publius Cornelius Dolabella, and according to report (unattributable, naturally) Antonius was furious about it. I remembered the man slightly. Three years previously he had been a tribune of the people and had proposed legislation canceling debts and remitting house rents, always a winner with the commons. His proposals had gone nowhere of course, but he had gained much popularity thereby.
It was entirely possible that his choice of causes was not lacking in self-interest. Dolabella was a notorious wastrel and many of the debts cancelled would be his own. Like many another such reprobate, Caesar, upon his return from Alexandria, had taken him under his wing, covered the worst of his debts, and hauled him off to Spain for some personal training and education. He was now firmly in the pro-Caesar camp. In just such a fashion had Caesar attached Scribonius Curio to his cause. Curio made him another useful tribune.
I couldn’t see that the choice could make much difference. Antonius’s prefecture of the City was where the real power la
y and Caesar would undoubtedly leave Dolabella a minutely detailed list of every action he expected the second consul to take and a very long list of things he forbade him to do. Antonius would get his own list, which he would ignore, but Dolabella would never dare.
I crossed the broad pavement and pushed past some oxen hauling a wagonload of marble to the new basilica. There was a great crowd of people standing about before the huge building, and many of them were foreigners. Some were truly exotic specimens and I knew these were not the usual travelers come to see the sights of the famous city. The lictors on guard pushed them back if they got too close. I walked up to one of the fasces-bearing men I recognized.
“Hello, Otacilius. I’ve come to see the dictator. I take it from your presence that he’s here?”
“Certainly, Senator. Your name is on the list of those allowed in.” He stepped aside for me.
I suppose I should have felt uniquely privileged to have my name on that list. Perhaps I should have preened. It was certain that many other senators preened to be thus singled out. At that time I could only reflect that there had been a time when any citizen could walk into a basilica any time it struck his fancy to, even if the thing was under construction.
I found Caesar inside, and Cleopatra was with him, which came as no surprise to me, having seen the crowd of exotics loitering about outside. Caesar, uncharacteristically, was seated and looked rather drawn.
“Well, Decius Caecilius,” Caesar said when he saw me, “I hope you have brought me some good news. I could use some.”
At that moment some things began to fit together in my mind. They did not give me anything complete, but it was as if some bricks had been added to what was still a very incomplete wall. I must have looked strange because Cleopatra said, “Well? Can you not speak?”
Caesar raised a hand. “Patience. The gods are speaking to him. It happens sometimes. I’ve seen this before.”
SPQR XIII: The Year of Confusion Page 21