Roma.The novel of ancient Rome r-1

by Steven Saylor

  “How would you know about that? Do you have spies in the Senate?”

  “The eyes and the ears of the tribunes are everywhere. We are the protectors of the people.”

  “You’re nothing more than hooligans.”

  “Did you or did you not threaten the tribunes?”

  “What I said before the Senate, I’ll say to your face: For the survival of Roma, the tribunes must be abolished!”

  “Gnaeus Marcius, I place you under arrest for threatening a tribune of the plebs and for interfering with his mission. Your fate will be decided by a vote of the people’s assembly.”

  “This is ridiculous!”

  “You will come with me.”

  “I will not! Take your hands off me!” Gnaeus repulsed the tribune so forcefully that the man stumbled and fell backward.

  Some of the men with Icilius produced cudgels and brandished them. Gnaeus struck one of them squarely in the nose and sent him reeling, then adroitly ducked a cudgel swung at his head. He struck another man and knocked him down. Titus, caught up in the excitement, joined the fight just as more men with cudgels arrived.

  “We must run, Titus!” shouted Gnaeus.

  “Run? Surely Coriolanus never runs!” Titus ducked a cudgel.

  “When he’s unarmed and outnumbered, even Coriolanus makes a strategic retreat!”

  The tribune’s men blocked the way back to the Senate House. Titus and Gnaeus ran in the opposite direction, toward the Capitoline, with the tribune and his men in pursuit. The last time the two of them had ascended the hill had been on the day of the triumph, when Gnaeus had received his title by the acclamation of the people. It occurred to Titus that some of the men pursuing them had probably been among those who shouted “Coriolanus!” How they had loved Gnaeus on that day; how they hated him now! Gnaeus was right, he thought. The rabble were fickle and foolish and did not deserve to have a warrior like Coriolanus to fight their battles.

  They sprinted up the winding pathway and approached the summit. “Has it occurred to you,” asked Titus, breathing hard, “that we shall have nowhere to go when we reach the top?”

  “There is no strategic retreat without a strategy!” said Gnaeus. “I shall enter the Temple of Jupiter and demand asylum. If the rabble can find asylum in your Temple of Ceres, then surely Jupiter can shield a senator!”

  But as they approached the temple steps, they were blocked by a group of men who had somehow circled ahead of them. There was no choice but to keep running, until they came to the Tarpeian Rock and could run no more.

  The swiftest of the pursuers, almost upon them, shouted back to the others, “Can you believe it? The gods have led them straight to the place of execution!”

  “Stand back!” cried the tribune Icilius. “No one will be executed today. This man is under arrest.”

  But as the mob approached, there were cries of “Swift justice!” and “Push him over!” and “Kill him now!”

  Titus, already light-headed from running, glanced over the precipice and staggered back. He was dizzy and his heart was pounding.

  “Now we see what sort of men you really are,” said Gnaeus. “Cold-blooded murderers!”

  “No one will be murdered!” insisted Icilius. He pushed his way to the front of the crowd. The mob surged behind him. He lowered his voice. “Senator, I am barely able to restrain these men. Do nothing to provoke them further! For your own safety, Senator, you must come with me.”

  “I will not! I recognize the authority of no man to arrest a Roman citizen simply for speaking his mind. Call off your curs, tribune, and leave me in peace!”

  “You dare to call us dogs?” One of the men behind Icilius threw his cudgel. It missed Gnaeus but struck a glancing blow to Titus’s temple. Titus staggered back and tottered on the precipice. Gnaeus leaped to catch him, and for an instant it appeared that both of them would fall. Gnaeus at last gained his balance and pulled Titus to safety.

  The mob, which had watched in breathless excitement, now roared with disappointment and surged forward. Icilius held out his arms to restrain them, but there were too many.

  Suddenly, there was a commotion at the back of the crowd. The consul Cominius had arrived with his lictors. The cudgels of the mob were no match for the axes of the lictors, who cleared a path through the crowd.

  “Tribune, what is happening here?” demanded Cominius.

  “I am placing this man under arrest.”

  “That’s a lie!” shouted Gnaeus. “These hooligans chased my colleague and me all the way from the Forum, with the clear intention of murdering us. Before you arrived, they were about to throw us from the Tarpeian Rock.”

  “A traitor’s death is what you deserve!” shouted one of the men. “Death to any man who tries to take away the protectors of the people!”

  “Stand down!” cried Cominius. “Spurius Icilius, stop this madness. Call off your men. Retract the arrest.”

  “Do you dare to interfere with the lawful duties of a tribune, Consul?” Icilius locked his gaze on Cominius, who eventually lowered his eyes.

  “Let there be a trial, if you insist,” said Cominius. “But in the meantime, let Coriolanus go free.”

  Icilius stared for a long moment at Gnaeus, then nodded. “Very well. Let the people decide his fate.”

  Gradually, grumbling and spitting contemptuously at the feet of the lictors, the mob dispersed, and Icilius withdrew. Gnaeus burst out laughing and strode forward to hug his old commander, but the consul’s expression was grim.

  Titus, feeling a bit sick from the blow to his head, sat down on the Tarpeian Rock. The others seemed like phantoms from a dream. He found himself staring at the temple and the magnificent quadriga of Jupiter atop the pediment. How he loved the building that Vulca had made!

  “Sometimes I think that even the gods have turned against me,” whispered Gnaeus. He paced back and forth across the moonlit garden. His face was in shadow, as were the faces of those who had come in answer to his summons. No lamps had been lit; the least flicker of light might alert his enemies to the midnight meeting in the house of Gnaeus Marcius.

  Titus was there. So were Appius Claudius and the consul Cominius. There were also a number of men dressed in full armor, as if ready to ride into battle. There seemed to be a great many of them, pressed together under the colonnade that surrounded the garden. By the light of the full moon upon their limbs Titus could see that most were young, and by the quality of their armor, he could see that all were men of means.

  In recent days, Gnaeus had attracted a large following of young warriors, most of them patricians, or men like himself, of plebeian rank but with patrician blood. Their devotion to Gnaeus-or Coriolanus, as they always called him-was fanatical. No less fanatical was the determination of the tribune Icilius and his plebeian followers to see Gnaeus destroyed. The raging dispute over his fate had torn Roma apart. His trial was to be held the next day.

  “The gods have nothing to do with this farce,” said Appius Claudius bitterly. “Men are to blame. Weak and foolish men! You should have been applauded as a hero by the Senate, Gnaeus. Instead, they’ve abandoned you.”

  “The matter was never that simple,” said Cominius with a sigh. “The right to elect the tribunes was won by the plebs only after a fierce struggle. Gnaeus stepped into the path of a raging bull when he decided to take them on.”

  “And are we to do nothing while that bull tramples the best man in Roma?” said Titus, his voice breaking. The day the mob chased them to the Tarpeian Rock had marked a turning point in his life. A great anger had welled up inside him; it hardened Titus’s heart against the plebs and drew him closer than ever to his boyhood friend. How had he been blind for so long to the threat posed by the plebs? How had he failed to see that Gnaeus was right all along? Titus felt guilty for not having supported Gnaeus more enthusiastically from the beginning. When Gnaeus was booed by weaker men for speaking the truth in the Senate, Titus should have been ready with his own speech to back him up.
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  “Don’t worry about the rampaging bull, Titus,” said Gnaeus. He placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “The beast will never touch me! I’ll sooner die by my own sword than submit to the punishment of that rabble.”

  “That ‘rabble,’ as you call it, is the people’s assembly,” said Cominius, “and I fear that their right to try you is beyond dispute. The matter has been fully debated in the Senate-”

  “Shameful!” muttered Appius Claudius. “I did my best to sway them, but to no avail!”

  “And so this mockery of justice, this so-called trial, will take place tomorrow,” said Gnaeus. “Is there truly no hope, Cominius?”

  “None. Icilius has stirred the plebs into a frenzy. I had hoped the influence of their betters might serve to cool their thirst for your blood, but even outright bribery has failed. Tomorrow you’ll be tried before the people’s assembly and found guilty of impugning the dignity and endangering the persons of the tribunes. Your property will be confiscated and auctioned; the proceeds will be donated to the fund for the poor in the Temple of Ceres. Your mother and wife will be left with nothing.”

  “And I?”

  Cominius hung his head. “You will be publicly scourged and executed.”

  “No! Never!” cried one of the young warriors from the shadows of the colonnade. His colleagues joined him with cries of outrage.

  Gnaeus raised his hands to quiet them. He turned to Cominius. “And if I leave Roma tonight, of my own volition? If I flee into exile?”

  Cominius drew a deep breath. “Icilius could try you in absentia, but I think I can convince him not to. He will have scored the victory he seeks, establishing the inviolability of the tribunes. If there is no trial, your property will remain intact. Your mother and wife will be provided for.”

  “I care nothing for my own life,” said Gnaeus. “Let them flay me and eat my flesh, if they wish. But I will never allow my property to be put into the hands of the aediles, to feed the lazy rabble of Roma!” He turned his face up to stare at the full moon. By its white light, his handsome features looked as though they had been sculpted from marble. “Exile!” he whispered. “After all I’ve done for Roma!” He lowered his face, so that it was once again in shadow. He addressed the warriors who surrounded him.

  “Some of you, when last we met, made a pledge that you would raise a sword and spill plebeian blood rather than see me executed, or, failing that, that you would follow me into exile. But now that the moment of decision has arrived, I do not hold any man to that pledge.”

  “We made a vow!” objected one of the men. “A Roman never breaks his oath!”

  “But if we leave Roma, never to return, are we still Romans? Think what it means to be a man without a city! This fate was thrust upon me. I cannot thrust it upon anyone else.”

  One of the men stepped forward. “We all came here tonight armed and ready to fight-ready to die, if necessary. If your decision as our commander is to withdraw instead of engaging the enemy, we go with you, Coriolanus!”

  “Even beyond the gates of Roma?”

  “Yes, just as we followed you inside the gates of Corioli! That day, you fought your way inside, alone, and the rest of us trailed after you, like tardy schoolboys. Not so, on this day! We remain at your side, Coriolanus!”

  “So say you all?”

  “So say we all!” shouted the warriors.

  Gnaeus laughed. “With that cry, you’ve awaked the whole Palatine! All Roma will soon be wondering what’s afoot at the house of Gnaeus Marcius. We have no choice now, but to leave at once!”

  While the others made ready, Gnaeus said farewell to Cominius and Claudius. He saw Titus standing in the shadows and went to his side. “I’ve already said farewell to my mother and my wife. Look after them, Titus, as carefully as you look after Claudia.”

  “I should go with you.”

  Gnaeus shook his head. “You heard what I told my warriors. This is a sacrifice I can demand of no man.”

  “Yet they follow you.”

  “That is their choice.”

  “It should be my choice, as well.”

  Gnaeus was silent for a long moment. Shadows hid his face, but Titus felt the man’s eyes upon him. “You have a temple to complete, Titus.”

  “Damn the Temple of Ceres, and all it stands for!”

  Gnaeus frowned. “A man must have something to believe in.”

  “As you once believed in Roma?”

  “Believe in Roma, Titus. Believe in the Temple of Ceres. Forget that Coriolanus ever lived.” Gnaeus turned and walked away. His followers encircled him. The entourage departed from the garden.

  Titus’s house was only a short distance away. Claudius offered to go with him, but Titus preferred to walk alone.

  The night was warm. The shutters were open. Moonlight flooded the chamber where Claudia was sleeping. Titus gazed upon her face for a long time. He walked to the room where his son slept, and gazed upon his face for an even longer time.

  He kept thinking of the image which Cominius had planted in his mind, of Gnaeus confronted by a stampeding bull. Hercules, whose altar had been in the keeping of Titus’s family for generations, had once fought a bull on the faraway island of Crete. Gods demanded sacrifice; heroes deserved loyalty. Was not Coriolanus just such a hero as Hercules had been?

  In his study, by moonlight-for he feared that lighting a lamp might wake those who slept-he wrote a message to Appius Claudius: Father-inlaw, I beseech you, look after your daughter and your grandson. I have done what I know to be right.

  He entered his son’s room. He lifted the talisman of Fascinus over his neck and slipped it, carefully and quietly, over his son’s neck. Deep in slumber, the boy reached up and touched the talisman, but never woke.

  If Titus hurried, he might catch up with Coriolanus and his men before they passed beyond the city gates.

  491 B.C.

  “It’s a long road that’s brought us here,” said Gnaeus.

  “A very long road indeed,” said Titus, smiling ruefully. He knew that his friend did not literally mean the road beneath their feet, which brought them, with each clop of the horses’ hooves, closer to Roma. Gnaeus was speaking of the curious twists and turns their lives had taken since the night they fled the city, two years ago.

  A man such as Gnaeus, with his knowledge of warfare and his reputation for bravery, and with a company of fanatically devoted warriors at his side, would have been welcomed in many cities. It was ironic, but perhaps predictable, that he chose to make an overture to the Volsci. True, he had spilled much Volscian blood, but always in honorable combat, and who was more likely than the Volsci to recognize his true worth? It was a curious thing, puzzling at first to Titus, that those whom Gnaeus had fought so ferociously could welcome him into their rank so enthusiastically. This was the way of the warrior: By a simple twist of fate, and in the blink of an eye, an enemy could become an ally.

  Of course, Gnaeus, being Gnaeus, had become much more than an ally. He quickly became the Volsci’s leading warrior, and then, just as quickly, commander of the whole army. The campaign to wreak vengeance on Roma had not been his idea, but that of the Volscian elders, who had to argue long and hard to overcome his resistance. Who better to anticipate and foil every Roman strategy than the man who been Roma’s greatest warrior? What greater triumph for the Volsci than to see Coriolanus do to Roma what he had done to Corioli? What sweeter revenge for Gnaeus Marcius than to bring the city that had spurned him to its knees?

  In the campaign against Roma, Gnaeus had transcended himself. The man who had proclaimed his desire to become Roma’s greatest warrior had become the greatest warrior in all of Italy, and the boldest general as well. It seemed to Titus, who fought at Gnaeus’s side in battle after battle, that the gods themselves must have taken a hand in delivering so many victories to his friend. The men under Gnaeus developed a superstitious belief in his leadership; the magic of his presence, not their bravery, was the key to victory. It was Titus’s pr
ivate conviction that the ancient spirit of Hercules now lived again in Coriolanus, the hero of the age. This religious conviction was a great solace to Titus in those moments when homesickness for Roma and his family threatened to overwhelm him.

  Now the final battle drew near. Every clop of the horses’ hooves along the road brought Gnaeus and the army of the Volsci closer to the very gate by which he had fled the city. In battle after battle, the armies of Roma had been defeated. Their ranks were depleted, their stores of arms captured and confiscated. The people were weakened as well. Crops had been burned, Roman colonies had been looted, and emergency supplies of grain from Sicily had been intercepted. As Roma grew more enfeebled, all the enemies whom she had humiliated in recent years flocked to join Gnaeus and the Volsci. The force led by Coriolanus was invincible.

  While the invaders were still two days south of Roma, envoys had ridden out from the city to meet with Gnaeus. They reminded him of his Roman lineage. They pleaded with him to turn back his army. Gnaeus treated them with scorn, but allowed them to return to Roma with their heads. “The fact that the Romans beg for peace shows they’re certain of defeat,” he said to Titus.

  The next day, two more envoys arrived. The dust from their chariot rose high in the still air and could be seen for a long time before they drew near enough to be recognized. Titus drew a sharp breath when he saw the haggard faces of Appius Claudius and Postumius Cominius.

  Gnaeus ordered his men to stay back while he rode forward to meet the two senators. Titus accompanied him. While Gnaeus acknowledged the two men’s greeting, Titus stayed to one side, unwilling to look his father-in-law in the eye.

  Cominius first assured Gnaeus that his wife and mother were well; despite Gnaeus’s betrayal, no one had taken vengeance on his family, and now no one would dare to do so. “My daughter Claudia and young Titus Potitius are also well,” added Claudius, though Titus still averted his eyes. Speaking for the consuls and the Senate, the two men acknowledged the great wrong that had been done to Gnaeus. They promised the restoration of his citizenship and his place in the Senate, and full immunity from prosecution by the tribunes.