Caesar's Women

by Colleen McCullough

  Then a worse scandal broke. The successful candidates for next year's consulships, Publius Sulla and his dear friend Publius Autronius, were discovered to have bribed massively. Gaius Piso's lex Calpurnia dealing with bribery might be a leaky vessel, but the evidence against Publius Sulla and Autronius was so ironclad that not even slipshod legislation could save them. Whereupon the guilty pair promptly pleaded guilty and offered to conclude a deal with the existing consuls and the new consuls-elect, Lucius Cotta and Lucius Manlius Torquatus. The upshot of this shrewd move was that the charges were dropped in return for payment of huge fines and an oath sworn by both men that neither of them would ever again stand for public office; that they got away with it was thanks to Gaius Piso's bribery law, which provided for such solutions. Lucius Cotta, who wanted a trial, was livid when his three colleagues voted that the miscreants could keep both citizenship and residency as well as the major portions of their immense fortunes.

  None of which really concerned Clodius, whose target was, as eight years earlier, Catilina. Mind running riot with dreams of revenge at last, Clodius prevailed upon the African plaintiffs to commission him to prosecute Catilina. Wonderful, wonderful! Catilina's comeuppance was at hand just when he, Clodius, had married the most exciting girl in the world! All his rewards had come at once, not least because Fulvia turned out to be an ardent partisan and helper, not at all the demure little stay-at-home bride other men than Clodius might perhaps have preferred.

  At first Clodius worked in a frenzy to assemble his evidence and witnesses, but the Catilina case was one of those maddening affairs wherein nothing happened quickly enough, from finding the evidence to locating the witnesses. A trip to Utica or Hadrumetum took two months, and the job needed many such trips to Africa. Clodius fretted and chafed, but then, said Fulvia, “Think a little, darling Publius. Why not drag the case out forever? If it isn't concluded before next Quinctilis, then for the second year in a row, Catilina won't be allowed to run for the consulship, will he?"

  Clodius saw the point of this advice immediately, and slowed down to the pace of an African snail. He would secure Catilina's conviction, but not for many moons to come. Brilliant!

  He then had time to think about Lucullus, whose career was ending in disaster. Through the lex Manilia, Pompey had been dowered with Lucullus's command against Mithridates and Tigranes, and had proceeded to exercise his rights. He and Lucullus had met at Danala, a remote Galatian citadel, and quarreled so bitterly that Pompey (who had until then been reluctant to squash Lucullus under the weight of his imperium maius) formally issued a decree outlawing Lucullus's actions, then banished him from Asia. After which Pompey re-enlisted the Fimbriani; free though they were at last to go home, the Fimbriani couldn't face such a major dislocation after all. Service in the legions of Pompey the Great sounded good.

  Banished in circumstances of awful humiliation, Lucullus went back to Rome at once, and sat himself down on the Campus Martius to await the triumph he was certain the Senate would grant him. But Pompey's tribune of the plebs,, his nephew Gaius Memmius, told the House that if it tried to grant Lucullus a triumph, he would pass legislation in the Plebeian Assembly to deny Lucullus any triumph; the Senate, said Memmius, had no constitutional right to grant such boons. Catulus, Hortensius and the rest of the boni fought Memmius tooth and nail, but could not marshal sufficient support; most of the Senate was of the opinion that its right to grant triumphs was more important than Lucullus, so why allow concern for Lucullus to push Memmius into creating an unwelcome precedent?

  Lucullus refused to give in. Every day the Senate met, he petitioned again for his triumph. His beloved brother, Varro Lucullus, was also in trouble with Memmius, who sought to convict him for peculations alleged to have occurred years and years before. From all of which it might safely be assumed that Pompey had become a nasty enemy of the two Luculli—and of the boni. When he and Lucullus had met in Danala, Lucullus had accused him of walking in to take all the credit for a campaign he, Lucullus, had actually won. A mortal insult to Pompey. As for the boni, they were still adamantly against these special commands for the Great Man.

  It might have been expected that Lucullus's wife, Clodilla, would visit him in his expensive villa on the Pincian Hill outside the pomerium, but she didn't. At twenty-five she was now a complete woman of the world, had Lucullus's wealth at her disposal and no one save big brother Appius to supervise her activities. Of lovers she had many, of reputation none savory.

  Two months after Lucullus's return, Publius Clodius and Fulvia visited her, though not with the intention of effecting a reconciliation. Instead (with Fulvia listening avidly) Clodius told his youngest sister what he had told Lucullus in Nisibis—that he, Clodia and Clodilla had done more than just sleep together. Clodilla thought it a great joke.

  "Do you want him back?" asked Clodius.

  "Who, Lucullus?" The great dark eyes widened, flashed. "No, I do not want him back! He's an old man, he was an old man when he married me ten years ago— had to fill himself up with Spanish fly before he could get a stir out of it!"

  "Then why not go out to the Pincian and see him, tell him you're divorcing him?" Clodius looked demure. “If you fancy a little revenge, you could confirm what I told him in Nisibis, though he might choose to make the story public, and that could be hard for you. I'm willing to take my share of the outrage, so is Clodia. But both of us will understand if you're not."

  "Willing?" squeaked Clodilla. "I'd love it! Let him spread the story! All we have to do is deny it, with many tears and protestations of innocence. People won't know what to believe. Everyone is aware of the state of affairs between you and Lucullus. Those on his side will believe his version of events. Those in the middle will vacillate.

  And those on our side, like brother Appius, will think us shockingly injured."

  "Just get in first and divorce him," said Clodius. "That way, even if he also divorces you, he can't strip you of a hefty share in his wealth. You've no dowry to fall back on."

  "How clever," purred Clodilla.

  "You could always marry again," said Fulvia.

  The dark and bewitching face of her sister-in-law twisted, became vicious. "Not I!" she snarled. "One husband was one too many! I want to manage my own destiny, thank you very much! It's been a joy to have Lucullus in the East, and I've salted away quite a snug little fortune at his expense. Though I do like the idea of getting in first with the divorce. Brother Appius can negotiate a settlement which will give me enough for the rest of my life."

  Fulvia giggled gleefully. "It will set Rome by the ears!''

  It did indeed set Rome by the ears. Though Clodilla divorced Lucullus, he then publicly divorced her by having one of his senior clients read out his proclamation from the rostra. His reasons, he said, were not merely because Clodilla had committed adultery with many men during his absence; she had also had incestuous relations with her brother Publius Clodius and her sister Clodia.

  Naturally most people wanted to believe it, chiefly because it was so deliciously awful, but also because the Claudii/Clodii Pulchri were an outlandish lot, brilliant and unpredictable and erratic. Had been for generations! Patricians, say no more.

  Poor Appius Claudius took it very hard, but had more sense than to be pugnacious about it; his best defense was to stalk around the Forum looking as if the last thing in the world he wanted to talk about was incest, and people took the hint. Rex had remained in the East as one of Pompey's senior legates, but Claudia, his wife, adopted the same attitude as big brother Appius. The middle one of the three brothers, Gaius Claudius, was rather intellectually dull for a Claudian, therefore not considered a worthy target by the Forum wits. Luckily Clodia's husband, Celer, was another absentee on duty in the East, as was his brother, Nepos; they would have been more awkward, asked some difficult questions. As it was, the three culprits went about looking both innocent and indignant, and rolled on the floor laughing when no outsiders were present. What a gorgeous scandal!


  Cicero, however, had the last word. "Incest," he said gravely to a large crowd of Forum frequenters, "is a game the whole family can play."

  Clodius was to rue his rashness when finally the trial of Catilina came on, for many of the jury looked at him askance, and allowed their doubts to color their verdict. It was a hard and bitter battle which Clodius for one fought valiantly; he had taken Cicero's advice about the nakedness of his prejudices and his malice seriously, and conducted his prosecution with skill. That he lost and Catilina was acquitted couldn't even be attributed to bribery, and he had learned enough not to imply bribery when the verdict of ABSOLVO came in. It was, he concluded, just the luck of the lots and the quality of the defense, which had been formidable.

  "You did well, Clodius," said Caesar to him afterward. "It wasn't your fault you lost. Even the tribuni aerarii on that jury were so conservative they made Catulus look like a radical." He shrugged. "You couldn't win with Torquatus leading the defense, not after the rumor that Catilina planned to assassinate him last New Year's Day. To defend Catilina was Torquatus's way of saying he didn't choose to believe the rumor, and the jury was impressed. Even so, you did well. You presented a neat case."

  Publius Clodius rather liked Caesar, recognizing in him another restless spirit, and envying him a kind of self-control Clodius was unhappily aware he didn't own. When the verdict came in, he had been tempted to scream and howl and weep. Then his eyes fell on Caesar and Cicero standing together to watch, and something in their faces gave him pause. He would have his revenge, but not today.

  To behave like a bad loser could benefit no one save Catilina.

  "At least it's too late for him to run for the consulship," said Clodius to Caesar, sighing, "and that's some sort of victory."

  "Yes, he'll have to wait another year." They walked up the Sacra Via toward the inn on the corner of the Clivus Orbius, with the imposing facade of Fabius Allobrogicus's arch across the Sacred Way filling their eyes. Caesar was on his way home, and Clodius heading for the inn itself, where his clients from Africa were lodging.

  "I met a friend of yours in Tigranocerta," said Clodius.

  "Ye gods, who could that have been?"

  "A centurion by name of Marcus Silius."

  "Silius? Silius from Mitylene? A Fimbrianus?"

  "The very one. He admires you very much."

  "It's mutual. A good man. At least now he can come home.''

  "It appears not, Caesar. I had a letter from him recently, written from Galatia. The Fimbriani have decided to enlist with Pompeius."

  "I wondered. These old campaigners weep a lot about home, but when an interesting campaign crops up, somehow home loses its allure." Caesar extended his hand with a smile. "Ave, Publius Clodius. I intend to follow your career with interest."

  Clodius stood outside the inn for some time, staring into nothing. When he finally entered, he looked as if he was prefect of his school—upright, honor-bound, incorruptible.

  PART III

  from JANUARY of 65 B.C.

  until QUINCTILIS of 63 B.C.

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  1

  Marcus Licinius Crassus was now so rich that he had begun to be called by a second cognomen, Dives, which just meant fabulously wealthy. And when together with Quintus Lutatius Catulus he was elected censor, nothing was missing from his career save a great and glorious military campaign. Oh, he had defeated Spartacus and earned an ovation for it, but six months in the field against a gladiator in whose army were many slaves rather took the gloss off his victory. What he hankered after was something more in the line of Pompey the Great—savior of his country, that kind of campaign. And that kind of reputation. It hurt to be eclipsed by an upstart!

  Nor was Catulus an amicable colleague in the censorship, for reasons which escaped the bewildered Crassus. No Licinius Crassus had ever been apostrophized as a demagogue or any other sort of political radical, so what was Catulus prating about?

  "It's your money," said Caesar, to whom he addressed this peevish question. "Catulus is boni, he doesn't condone commercial activities for senators. He'd dearly love to see himself in tandem with another censor and both of them busy investigating you. But since you're his colleague, he can't very well do that, can he?"

  "He'd be wasting his time if he tried!" said Crassus indignantly. "I do nothing half the Senate doesn't do! I make my money from owning property, which is well within the province of every or any senator! I admit I have a few shares in companies, but I am not on a board of directors, I have no vote in how a company will conduct its business. I'm simply a source of capital. That's unimpeachable!"

  "I realize all that," said Caesar patiently, "and so does our beloved Catulus. Let me repeat: it's your money. There's old Catulus toiling away to pay for the rebuilding of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, never managing to increase the family fortune because every spare sestertius has to go into Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Whereas you just keep on making money. He's jealous."

  "Then let him save his jealousy for men who deserve it!" growled Crassus, unmollified.

  Since stepping down from the consulship he had shared with Pompey the Great, Crassus had gone into a new kind of business, one pioneered forty years earlier by a Servilius Caepio: namely, the manufacture of arms and armaments for Rome's legions in a series of townships north of the Padus River in Italian Gaul. It was his good friend Lucius Calpurnius Piso, the armaments gatherer for Rome during the Italian War, who had drawn Crassus's attention to it. Lucius Piso had recognized the potential in this new industry, and espoused it so wholeheartedly that he succeeded in making a great deal of money out of it. His ties of course were to Italian Gaul anyway, for his mother had been a Calventia from Italian Gaul. And when Lucius Piso died, his son, another Lucius Piso, continued both in this activity and in the warm friendship with Crassus. Who had finally been brought to see the advantages in owning whole towns devoted to the manufacture of chain mail, swords, javelins, helmets, daggers; senatorially proper too.

  As censor Crassus was now in a position to help his friend Lucius Piso as well as young Quintus Servilius Caepio Brutus, the heir to the Servilius Caepio manufactories in Feltria, Cardianum, Bellunum. Italian Gaul on the far side of the Padus had been Roman for so long by now that its citizens, many of them Gauls but many more of mixed stock due to intermarriage, had come to harbor much resentment because they were still being denied the citizenship. Only three years earlier there had been stirrings, quietened after the visit of Caesar returning from Spain. And Crassus saw his duty very clearly once he became censor and had charge of the rolls of Roman citizens: he would help his friends Lucius Piso and Caepio Brutus and establish a huge clientele for himself by giving the full Roman citizenship to everyone on the far side of the Padus in Italian Gaul. Everyone south of the Padus had the full citizenship—it didn't seem right to deny people of exactly the same blood just because they were located on the wrong side of a river!

  But when he announced his intention to enfranchise all of Italian Gaul, his fellow censor Catulus seemed to go mad. No, no, no! Never, never, never! Roman citizenship was for Romans, and Gauls were not Romans! There were already too many Gauls calling themselves Romans, like Pompey the Great and his Picentine minions.

  "The old, old argument," said Caesar, disgusted. "The Roman citizenship must be for Romans only. Why can't these idiot boni see that all the peoples of Italia everywhere are Romans? That Rome herself is really Italia?"

  "I agree with you," said Crassus, "but Catulus doesn't."

  Crassus's other scheme was not favored either.

  He wanted to annex Egypt, even if that meant going to war—with himself at the head of the army, of course. On the subject of Egypt, Crassus had become such an authority that he was encyclopaedic. And every single fact he learned only served to confirm what he had suspected, that Egypt was the wealthiest nation in the world.

  "Imagine it!" he said to Caesar, face for once anything but bovine and impassive. "Phara
oh owns everything! There's no such thing as freehold land in Egypt— it's all leased from Pharaoh, who collects the rents. All the products of Egypt belong to him outright, from grain to gold to jewels to spices and ivory! Only linen is excluded. It belongs to the native Egyptian priests, but even then Pharaoh takes a third of it for himself. His private income is at least six thousand talents a year, and his income from the country another six thousand talents. Plus extra from Cyprus."

  "I heard," said Caesar, for no other reason than that he wanted to bait the Crassus bull, “that the Ptolemies have been so inept they've run through every drachma Egypt possesses."

  The Crassus bull did snort, but derisively rather than angrily. "Rubbish! Absolute rubbish! Not the most inept Ptolemy could spend a tenth of what he gets. His income from the country keeps the country—pays for his army of bureaucrats, his soldiers, his sailors, police, priests, even his palaces. They haven't been to war in years except on each other, and then the money simply goes to the victor, not out of Egypt. His private income he puts away, and all the treasures—the gold, the silver, the rubies and ivory and sapphires, the turquoise and carnelian and lapis lazuli—he never even bothers to convert into cash, they all get put away too. Except for what he gives to the artisans and craftsmen to make into furniture or jewelry."

  “What about the theft of the golden sarcophagus of Alexander the Great?'' asked Caesar provocatively. “The first Ptolemy called Alexander was so impoverished he took it, melted it down into gold coins and replaced it with the present rock-crystal sarcophagus."

  "And there you have it!" said Crassus scornfully. "Truly, all these ridiculous stories! That Ptolemy was in Alexandria for about five days all told before he fled. And do you mean to tell me that in the space of five days he removed an object of solid gold weighing at least four thousand talents, cut it into pieces small enough to fit into a goldsmith's beaker-sized furnace, melted all those little pieces down in however many furnaces, and then stamped out what would have amounted to many millions of coins? He couldn't have done it inside a year! Not only that, but where's your common sense, Caesar? A transparent rock-crystal sarcophagus big enough to contain a human body—yes, yes, I am aware Alexander the Great was a tiny fellow!—would cost a dozen times what a solid-gold sarcophagus would cost. And take years to fashion once a big enough piece was found. Logic says someone found that big enough piece, and by coincidence the replacement happened while Ptolemy Alexander was there. The priests of the Sema wanted the people to actually see Alexander the Great."