“And?” said Antonius, fidgeting like a boy.
Caesar laughed. “Patience, Antonius! Patience! The custard course is on its way. We shall be enjoying tender bits of fowl and pork in an egg custard spiced with garum-isn’t that right, Lepidus? Lepidus has one of the finest cooks on the Palatine-”
“Commander, please!”
“Very well, the custard will have to wait.” Caesar cleared his throat. “I suppose I should stand up for this, and all of you should reach for your cups. My good friends: Tomorrow, Caesar shall put forward a request to the Senate-and the Senate, I feel certain, will consent.” This elicited mild laughter. “Caesar shall request a new command. The specific purpose of this command will be a military campaign against…Antonius, you look fit to burst.” There was more laughter, until at last Caesar said the word they were waiting to hear: “Parthia!”
“Parthia!” they shouted, raising their cups.
So the rumor was true, thought Lucius, draining his cup with the rest. His great-uncle, not satisfied to have mastered the whole of the Mediterranean world, had set his sights on yet another conquest: the land of the ancient Persians, which, since its conquest by Alexander, had become the kingdom of Parthia.
In all the known world, Parthia was the only power that could possibly rival Roma. When Lucius was nine years old, a man named Marcus Licinius Crassus, who was famous for putting down the great slave revolt led by Spartacus, led a Roman army to engage the Parthians, using Syria as his base of operations. Crassus had been the richest man in Roma and the political equal of Pompeius and Caesar; for a while the three of them formed the so-called Triumvirate, which temporarily stabilized the rivalry between them even as each plotted for a greater share of power. Crassus’s bid for fortune had been his invasion of Parthia. He had hoped to accomplish there what Caesar was already accomplishing in Gaul, reaping wealth and glory-except that the fabulous spoils of Parthia would far exceed anything to be taken in Gaul.
Instead, Crassus met Nemesis. At the battle of Carrhae his army was surrounded and subjected to a relentless barrage of armor-piercing Parthian arrows. Leading a cavalry unit to try to break through the Parthian lines, Crassus’s son Publius was killed; his head was cut off and used to taunt his beleaguered father. After the loss of twenty thousand Roman soldiers and the capture of ten thousand more, the Parthians offered Crassus a truce, then betrayed him and killed him, and beheaded him as they had his son. The Parthians celebrated their triumph over the invading Romans with great pomp, and presented the head of the Crassus as a gift to their ally, the king of Armenia, who reputedly used it in a production of Euripides’ play The Bacchae. Crassus had hoped to be head of the world; instead, his head became a stage prop.
The shadow of Crassus’s defeat had haunted the Romans ever since. The Parthians loomed as the great, unconquered enemy to the east. Now that civil war had settled the power struggle within the fractured Republic, it seemed only natural that the master of Roma should turn his attention to Parthia.
“Let me say outright that the military prowess of the Parthians must not be discounted,” said Caesar. “But nor should it be overestimated. We must not be put off by the defeat of Crassus. To be candid, as a commander he was not the equal of any man here-and I include you, Lucius, untested as you are. As a junior officer, Crassus served Sulla well, but he was always overshadowed by Pompeius. True, he put down the slave revolt of Spartacus, but afterward the Senate refused to reward him with a triumph, and for good reason; it would have been unseemly for a Roman to celebrate a victory over an army of slaves. The Parthian campaign was Crassus’s desperate attempt to make his mark as a military man. He overreached.”
“Even so,” said Antonius, “if we’re taking on the Parthians, I intend to make sure my will is in order.” The grim joke was typical of his humor, especially when he was drinking.
Antonius’s remark was greeted by good-natured booing from the others, but Caesar dismissed their objections. “Antonius speaks wisely. My own will is kept safe by the Vestal virgins. A man must think ahead to the day when all that remains of him is his name. As long as men speak his name, his glory lives. As for worldly possessions, great or small, a man should take steps to see that they are disbursed as he sees fit.” Caesar glanced at Lucius, and then at Antonius, but the significance of his glances was hard to read.
What provisions might Caesar’s will contain? No one knew. Caesar was king in all but name, but he was a king with no clear heir. He had never acknowledged the son of Cleopatra as his own. Rumors attested that Marcus Junius Brutus, who had fought against Caesar and been pardoned by him, was Caesar’s bastard, but Caesar himself had never acknowledged the possibility. Caesar’s closest male relations were the offspring of his two sisters-his nephew Quintus Pedius, who had served him in Gaul, and his young grand-nephews, Gaius Octavius and Lucius Pinarius. Of the three, only Lucius was present at the dinner; the other two were away from Roma on military duties.
Antonius took note of their absence. “A pity that your other two nephews couldn’t be here tonight.”
“Yes. But all three shall have the opportunity to cover themselves with glory in the Parthian campaign. Quintus is already battle-tested. As for Gaius…” Caesar’s eyes lit up; he was very fond of Gaius Octavius. “He’s only eighteen, but full of spirit; he reminds me of myself at that age. Despite his misfortunes in the last year-illness and shipwreck-he managed to take part in the final push against the Pompeian remnants in Spain, and he acquitted himself well. He lost his father when he was only four. I, too, lost my father when I was young, so I’ve done my best to look after him. He’s not a bad orator, either.”
“He had the best possible teacher,” said Antonius.
Caesar shook his head. “Not I. It comes to him naturally. I still remember the eulogy he delivered at the funeral of his grandmother, when he was only twelve.”
“And what of this fellow?” said Antonius, smiling at Lucius. For a moment Lucius was afraid that the man would reach over and muss his hair, as if he were still a boy. Listening to Caesar praise his cousin Gaius made Lucius feel acutely aware of his own lack of accomplishments.
“Lucius is only beginning his career,” said Caesar. “But I have my eye on him. Parthia will give him the chance to show the world what he’s made of.”
“To the Parthian campaign, then!” said Lucius, impulsively seizing his cup and lifting it high.
“To the Parthian campaign!” said Antonius. He and the others joined the toast. Caesar nodded approvingly.
There was more food and more wine. The conversation shifted. Lepidus remarked on the fact that Caesar had seen fit to restore the statues of Sulla and of Pompeius, which had been pulled down and smashed by the mob in the wake of Caesar’s victory. Why had Caesar put his enemies back on their pedestals?
“Lepidus, you know that it has always been Caesar’s policy to show clemency; vindictiveness gains a man nothing in the long run. Sulla, despite his crimes, and Pompeius, despite his fatal mistakes, were both great Romans. They deserve to be remembered. And so, by Caesar’s order, the gilded statue of Sulla on horseback will soon be back on its pedestal near the Rostra. Already the statue of Pompeius has returned to its place of honor, in the assembly room at the theater Pompeius built on the Field of Mars. That’s where the Senate will meet tomorrow. The statue of Pompeius shall witness my request for the Parthian command.”
He took a bite of custard, and smiled. “It was good of Pompeius, to provide Roma with its first permanent theater. We shall remember him for that, if for nothing else. As for Sulla, he was a political dunce to give up his dictatorship. But if he hadn’t done so, where would Caesar be today?”
“Where would we all be?” asked Antonius, who saw the occasion for another toast.
Lucius at last felt sufficiently emboldened by wine and by the camaraderie of the others to join in the conversation. “Uncle,” he said, “may one be so bold as to ask your intentions for Roma?”
“What do you mean, young man?”
“I mean, your intentions for the city itself. There’s a rumor that you may move the capital to the ancient site of Troy, or even to Alexandria.”
Caesar looked at him archly. “However do such rumors get started? Why Troy, I wonder?”
Lucius shrugged. “My tutors claim there’s an ancient link between Troy and Roma. Long ago, even before the days of Romulus and Remus, the Trojan warrior Aeneas survived the fall of his city, fled across the sea, and settled near the Tiber. His bloodline flows in the blood of the Romans.”
“And for that reason I should abandon the city of my birth and make my capital at Troy?” said Caesar. “To be sure, its location on the coast of Asia makes it a central point between East and West, especially if our possessions are expanded into Parthia and beyond. But no, I won’t build a new capital at Troy. And why would I move the capital to Alexandria? The reason for that rumor is obvious, I suppose. Between Roma and Egypt there now exists, shall we say, a special relationship.”
“You did place a statue of Queen Cleopatra in your new Temple of Venus, right beside the goddess herself,” noted Antonius.
“I did. It seemed to me an appropriate gesture to commemorate her state visit. As for Alexandria, it’s a very old, very sophisticated city-”
“A city founded by a conqueror, and accustomed to the rule of kings,” said Antonius.
“Nonetheless, I have no intention of making it the world’s capital.”
“But you can see, Uncle,” said Lucius, “why people become so upset by such rumors. They’re afraid that if you take the treasury and the state bureaucracy elsewhere, Roma will be reduced to a provincial backwater, and the Senate will become little more than a city council.”
Caesar laughed. “Amusing as that notion may be, I have no intention of moving the capital. I suppose I should make that clear in my address to the senators tomorrow, to allay their worries. The gods themselves decreed that Roma should be the center of the world; so it always shall be. Far from abandoning the city, I have plans to enlarge and enrich it. My engineers are working on a scheme to divert the course of the Tiber and to build breakwaters along the coast, so as to make Ostia as great a harbor as Carthage was. Think what a boon that will be for Roma’s commerce!”
“And speaking of Carthage…,” said Antonius.
Caesar nodded. “Yes, already I’ve begun to build new colonies at Carthage and at Corinth, the two great cities that our forefathers destroyed in a single year. The Greeks will praise the rebirth of Corinth, and the colony at Carthage fulfills the old, thwarted dream of Gaius Gracchus. Yes, great plans are afoot. Great plans…”
The conversation became looser as more wine flowed. Lucius noticed that Caesar imbibed considerably less than the others, and Antonius considerably more.
It was Lepidus who brought up the subject of death.
“We all know how Sulla died, in bed of a horrible disease; but to the very end, he behaved like a cruel tyrant, ordering the death of another. Crassus too met a wretched end. After Pharsalus, Pompeius sailed to Egypt hoping to make a final stand, but the minions of King Ptolemy stabbed him to death before he could set foot on shore, then delivered his head as a trophy to Caesar. After the battle of Thapsus, Cato fell on his sword, but his loyal servants found him and stitched him up; he had to wait until they slept to tear out the stitches with his fingers and finish his own disembowelment.”
“And your point in recounting this grisly catalogue, Lepidus?” asked Antonius.
“Death comes in many forms. If a man could choose, what would be the best death?”
Caesar spoke at once. “Sudden and unexpected, even if bloody and painful. That would be much preferable to a lingering death. Of all the episodes you mention, Lepidus, the death of Pompeius was best. The others all saw the shadow of death long before it reached them, and must have contemplated it with dread, but up to the very last, Pompeius still possessed hope, however fragile, and his end came as a surprise, however shocking. To be sure, his body was defiled, but when I came into possession of his remains I saw to it that they were purified and given the proper rites. His ghost is at peace.”
The dinner drew to an end. The guests took their leave. Caesar declared his intention to walk alone with Lucius to the house of his parents. “There’s a private matter which I should like to discuss with my nephew,” he said, looking at Lucius and then averting his eyes.
“Alone? Just the two of you?” said Antonius.
“Why not?”
“At least a few of us should go with you,” said Antonius. “For your protection. If you need privacy, we can stay a few paces behind.”
Caesar shook his head. “Toward what end has Caesar done so much to please the people of Roma, with great public feasts and entertainments, if not to make it safe for himself to walk across the city without a bodyguard?”
“That’s a fine notion,” said Antonius, “but in reality-”
“No, Antonius. I won’t walk the streets of my city in fear of my life. A man dies only once. The dread of death causes far more misery than the thing itself, and I shall not submit to it. It’s only a short walk from here to the house of Lucius, and an even shorter walk from there to my house. I shall be perfectly safe.”
Antonius began to protest, but Caesar silenced him with a look.
As the two of them crossed the Palatine Hill alone under moonlight, Lucius as always felt a bit uncomfortable in his great-uncle’s presence, and sensed that Caesar felt uneasy, as well. Several times Caesar began to speak, then fell silent. The world’s greatest general and second-greatest orator-for even Caesar ceded the highest place to the eloquent Cicero-seemed unable to express himself.
“To Hades with this!” he finally muttered. “I shall say it as plainly as I can. Lucius, your grandfather…”
“The one they call Unlucky?”
“Yes. He did me a very great favor once. He saved my life.”
“How did he do that, Uncle?”
“This is very difficult to talk about. In fact, I’ve never told this story to anyone. But you deserve to know the truth about your grandparents, Lucius, and the sacrifice they made for my sake. This was during Sulla’s dictatorship, at the height of the proscriptions. I was very young, only a year or so older than you are now. I was in great danger. I was also very ill, suffering from the quartan ague.” He looked up at the moon. By its soft light Lucius caught a glimpse of the youth Caesar once had been. “Maybe that’s why I refuse to fear death now; I had enough of fearing death when I was young. Anyway, I was skulking from house to house, hiding from Sulla’s henchmen, but at the home of your grandparents a fellow named Phagites caught up with me…”
He proceeded to tell Lucius about the bribe that Lucius’s grandfather paid to save his life, and later, in the presence of Sulla himself, the extraordinary sacrifice that was required of Julia and Lucius the Unlucky-the dissolution of their marriage when Caesar refused to divorce his wife at Sulla’s whim.
“Your grandmother was heartbroken, but she adapted swiftly; that was her nature. But your grandfather was never the same. He was a broken man. He had acted honorably, yet he felt dishonored. He saw no way to right the wrong that had been done to him. If he had lived, eventually I might have found some way to make recompense, some means to help him regain his self-respect. But he died while he was still quite young, and before I could make my mark on the world.”
They had been strolling at a slow pace. Caesar abruptly halted. “Do you know how he died?”
“He fell on a patch of ice.”
“Yes. Do you know where?”
Lucius shrugged. “Somewhere here on the Palatine, I think.”
“It was on the very spot where we now stand.”
Under the silver moonlight, it was not hard to imagine the paving stones glazed with ice. Lucius shivered. “By your reckoning, Uncle, his was a good death-swift and without warning. Perhaps the gods granted him an early death as a kind of mercy.”
“Perhaps. But the
debt I owed to your grandfather has weighed upon me ever since. Not even the gods can change the past, and the dead are beyond our reach. But I can make certain that you, Lucius, will have every opportunity to earn your own place of honor. I would have done so anyway, because you’re my kin; but I wanted you to know of your grandfather’s sacrifice, so that between the two of us there is an understanding of what came before. I should be gratified to see you attain the dignity that your grandfather believed he had lost.”
Lucius considered this. “Thank you for telling me, Uncle. I’m not sure what else I can say.” Silently, he wondered about the words Caesar had spoken with such gravity. What did “dignity” and “honor” mean now? In a world ruled by a king, the ancient Course of Honor, with each man competing against equals to become first man in the state, had become meaningless.
Caesar seemed to read his thoughts. “In the future, the Course of Honor will not have quite the same significance as it did for our ancestors. But ambitious men will still be able to earn Roma’s gratitude, along with personal wealth and glory, on the battlefield. Shall I confide a secret to you, Lucius? Something I haven’t shared even with Antonius?”
He commenced walking again, in the direction of Lucius’s house. “My military ambitions-my ambitions for Roma-are even greater than Antonius and the others assume. The idea of conquering Parthia greatly excites them, as you saw, but that is as far as their imaginations can reach. Caesar’s plans extend far beyond the conquest of Parthia. My dream is to take Parthia, yes-and then to traverse the far side of the Euxine Sea and circle back, conquer Scythia and Germania and all the lands that border them, cross the channel to Britannia, and then return to Italy by way of Gaul, ending where I began. When Caesar is finished, Roma’s dominion will comprise a true world empire, bounded on every side by ocean.”
Lucius was awed by the grandeur of this vision. He was flattered that Caesar should confide in him. But Caesar was not finished.
“No such empire has ever existed before; even Alexander’s empire was not as far-flung. And of course, upon his death, the lands Alexander conquered did not remain unified but were divided among his heirs, with a great deal of confusion and bloodshed. Alexander’s general Ptolemy did the best, when he took Egypt; Queen Cleopatra is his direct descendent. But what will happen to Roma’s empire when I die, Lucius? Will it be a single kingdom with a single ruler? Will it be carefully divided into many kingdoms, all closely allied? Or will it be splintered into rival kingdoms, each at war with the other?”
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