Caesar's Women

by Colleen McCullough

  “It would be more convenient for me if you came to my house in future," said Servilia to Caesar as she marched into his rooms on the lower Vicus Patricii.

  "It isn't your house, Servilia, it's Silanus's, and the poor wretch has enough trouble looming without having to watch me invade his house to copulate with his wife!" snapped Caesar. "I enjoyed doing that to Cato, but I won't do it to Silanus. For a great patrician lady, you sometimes have the ethics of a brat from the Suburan gutter!"

  "Have it your own way," said Servilia, sitting down.

  To Caesar this reaction was significant; dislike Servilia he might, but by now he knew her very well, and the fact that she chose to sit fully clad rather than automatically stood to disrobe herself told him she was not nearly as sure of her ground as her attitude suggested. So he sat down too, in a chair from which he could watch her and in which she could see him from head to toe. His pose was graceful and curule, left foot back, right extended, left arm draped along the chair back, right hand lying in his lap, head level but chin up.

  "By rights I ought to strangle you," he said after a pause.

  "Silanus thought you'd chop me into pieces and feed me to the wolves."

  "Did he now? That's interesting."

  "Oh, he was all on your side! How you men do stick together! He actually had the temerity to be angry with me because—though I fail to see why!—my letter to you forced him to vote to execute the conspirators. A nonsense if ever I heard one!"

  "You fancy yourself a political expert, my dear, but the truth is that you're a political ignoramus. You can never watch senatorial politics in action, and there's a vast difference between senatorial politics and comitial politics. I suppose men go about their public life armed with the knowledge that sooner or later they'll wear a pair of horns, but no man expects to have to don his horns in the Senate during a critical debate," said Caesar harshly. "Of course you forced him to vote for execution! Had he voted with me, the whole House would have assumed that he was my pander. Silanus is not a well man, but he is a proud one. Why else do you think he kept silent after he was informed what was occurring between us? A note read by half the Senate, and that the important half? You really did rub his nose in it, didn't you?"

  "I see you're on his side as much as he's on yours."

  He gave an explosive sigh and rolled his eyes ceilingward. "The only side I'm on, Servilia, is my own."

  "You would be!"

  A silence fell; he broke it.

  "Our children surpass us for maturity. They've taken it very well, and very sensibly."

  "Have they?" she asked indifferently.

  "You've not spoken to Brutus about it?"

  "Not since the day it happened and Cato arrived to inform Brutus that his mother is a slut. 'Strumpet' is the word he used, actually." She smiled reminiscently. "I made mincemeat of his face."

  "Ah, so that's the answer! Next time I see Cato I must tell him that I feel for him. I too have sampled your claws."

  "Only where the marks are not on public display."

  "I see I must be thankful for small mercies."

  She leaned forward eagerly. "Did he look frightful? Did I scar him badly?"

  "Shockingly. He looked as if a harpy had been at him." A grin came. "Come to think of it, 'harpy' is a better word for you than 'slut' or 'strumpet.' However, don't congratulate yourself too much. Cato has good skin, so in time the marks will disappear."

  "You don't scar easily either."

  “Because Cato and I have the same kind of skin. War experience teaches a man what will stay and what will go." Another explosive sigh. "What am I going to do with you, Servilia?"

  “Perhaps to ask that question is putting your left shoe on your right foot, Caesar. The initiative might belong to me, not to you."

  That provoked a chuckle. "Rubbish," he said gently.

  She went pale. "You mean I love you more than you love me."

  "I don't love you at all."

  "Then why are we together?"

  "You please me in bed, which is rare in women of your class. I like the combination. And you have more between your ears than most women, even though you're a harpy."

  "Is that where you think it is?" she asked, desperate to get him away from her failings.

  "What?"

  "Our thinking apparatus."

  "Ask any army surgeon or soldier and he'll tell you. It's blows to the head damage our thinking apparatus. Cerebrum, the brain. What all the philosophers argue about isn't cerebrum, it's animus. The animating spirit, the soul. The part which can conceive ideas bearing no relation to our senses, from music to geometry. The part which soars. That's in a place we do not know. Head, chest, belly ..." He smiled. "It might even live in our big toes. Logical, when you think of how gout can destroy Hortensius."

  "I believe you have answered my question. I now know why we are together."

  "Why?"

  "Because of that. I am your hone. You sharpen your wits on me, Caesar."

  She got out of the chair and began to remove her clothing. Suddenly Caesar wanted her badly, but not to cradle her or treat her tenderly. One didn't tame a harpy by kindness. A harpy was a grotesque one took on the floor with teeth in her neck and her claws locked behind her back, then took again, and again.

  Rough usage always did tame her; she became soft and slightly kittenish after he transferred her from the floor to the bed.

  "Have you ever loved any woman?" she asked then.

  "Cinnilla," he said abruptly, and closed his eyes on tears.

  "Why?" asked the harpy. "There was nothing special about her, she wasn't witty or intelligent. Though she was patrician."

  In answer he turned on his side away from her, and pretended to nap. Talk to Servilia about Cinnilla? Never!

  Why did I love her so, if that is what it was I felt? Cinnilla was mine from the time I took her hand and led her home from the house of Gaius Marius in the days when he had become a demented shadow of himself. How old was I, thirteen? And she was all of seven, the adorable little thing. So dark and plump and sweet... The way her upper lip folded under when she smiled, and she smiled a lot. Gentleness personified. No cause of her own, unless her cause was I. Did I love her so much because we were children together first? Or was it that in chaining me to a priesthood and marrying me to a child he didn't know, old Gaius Marius gifted me with something so precious I will never meet it again?

  He sat up convulsively and slapped Servilia so hard on the behind that she wore the mark for the rest of the day.

  "Time to go," he said. "Go on, Servilia, go! Go now!"

  She went without a word, and she hurried, something in his face filling her with the same kind of terror she inspired in Brutus. As soon as she had gone Caesar turned his head into the pillow and wept as he had not wept since Cinnilla died.

  The Senate didn't meet again that year. Not an unusual state of affairs, as no formal schedule of meetings existed; they were called by a magistrate, and usually by the consul with the fasces for that month. It being December, Antonius Hybrida was supposed to be in the chair, but Cicero was filling in for him, and Cicero had had his fill. Nor was there any news from Etruria worth ferreting the senators out of their burrows. The craven lot! Besides, the senior consul just couldn't be sure what else Caesar might do if given half a chance. Every comitial day Metellus Nepos kept trying to fire Hybrida, and Cato kept vetoing him. Atticus and Cicero's other knightly adherents in the Eighteen were working hard to bring people around to the Senate's point of view, yet there were many dark faces and darker looks on all sides.

  The one factor Cicero had not counted on was the young men; deprived of their beloved stepfather, the Antonii had enlisted the members of the Clodius Club. Under normal circumstances no one of Cicero's age and standing would have noticed them, but the conspiracy of Catilina and its outcome had pushed them out of the shadows their youth created. And what huge clout they had! Oh, not among the First Class, but at all levels below that, certainly.
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  Young Curio was a case in point. Wild to a fault, he had even been imprisoned in his room by the elder Curio, at his wits' end to cope with the consequences of Curio's drinking, gambling and sexual exploits. That hadn't worked. Mark Antony had broken him out and the two of them had been seen in a low tavern losing at dice, drinking, and kissing voluptuously. Now young Curio had a cause, and suddenly he displayed a side not associated with idle vice. Young Curio was cleverer by far than his father, and a brilliant orator. Every day he was in the Forum making trouble.

  Then there was Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus, son and heir of a family bound by tradition to oppose every Popularist cause; Decimus Brutus Callaicus had been one of the most obdurate enemies of the Brothers Gracchi, allied to the non-Gracchan branch of the clan Sempronius, cognominated Tuditanus. Amicitia persisted from one generation to the next, which meant that young Decimus Brutus should have been supporting men like Catulus, not destructive agitators like Gaius Caesar. Instead, there was Decimus Brutus in the Forum egging Metellus Nepos on, cheering Caesar when he appeared, and making himself absolutely charming to all sorts of people from freedmen to the Fourth Class. Another extremely intelligent and capable young man who apparently was lost to the principles upheld by the boni—and kept low company!

  As for Publius Clodius—well... Since the trial of the Vestals a full ten years earlier, everyone had known Clodius to be Catilina's most vocal enemy. Yet here he was, complete with hordes and hordes of clients (how did he come to have more clients than his oldest brother, Appius Claudius?), stirring up trouble for Catilina's enemies! Usually squiring his wretched wife on his arm, in itself a colossal affront! Women didn't frequent the Forum; women didn't listen to comitial meetings from a prominent place; women didn't raise their voices to shout encouragement and bawdy abuse. Fulvia did all of those—and the crowd apparently loved it, if for no other reason than that she was the granddaughter of Gaius Gracchus, who had left no male progeny.

  Until the execution of their stepfather, no one had ever taken the Antonii seriously. Or was it that men looked no further than the scandals trailing in their wake? None of the three owned the ability or brilliance of young Curio or Decimus Brutus or Clodius, but they had something in its way more appealing to the crowd, the same fascination exerted by outstanding gladiators or charioteers: sheer physical power, a dominance arising out of brute strength. Mark Antony was in the habit of appearing clad only in a tunic, which garb allowed people to see the massive calves and biceps, the width of the shoulders, the flatness of the belly, the vault of the chest, the forearms like oak; he also pulled that tunic very tightly across his front, thereby displaying the outline of his penis so revealingly that the whole world knew it was not looking at padding. Women sighed and swooned; men swallowed miserably and wished they were dead. He was very ugly in the face, with a big beaky nose which strove to meet a huge and aggressive chin across a small but thick-lipped mouth; his eyes were too close together and his cheeks fleshy. But the auburn hair was thick, crisp and curling, and women joked that it was terrific fun to find his mouth for a kiss without being turtle-nipped by his nose and chin. In short, Mark Antony (and his brothers, though to a lesser extent) didn't have to be a great orator or a courtroom eel; he simply rolled along like the awesome monster he was.

  Several very good reasons why Cicero chose not to convene the Senate for the rest of his year—had Caesar himself not been sufficient cause to lie low.

  However, on the last day of December as the sun neared its rest, the senior consul went to meet the People in the Popular Assembly and lay down his insignia of office. He had worked long and hard on his valediction, intending to exit from the consular stage with a speech the like of which Rome had never heard. His honor demanded it; so did his self-esteem. Even if Antonius Hybrida had been in Rome he would have presented no competition, but as it was, Cicero had the stage to himself. How lovely!

  "Quirites," he began in his most mellifluous voice, "this has been a momentous year for Rome—"

  "Veto, veto!" shouted Metellus Nepos from the Comitia well. "I veto any speeches, Cicero! No man who executed Roman citizen men without a trial can be allowed the opportunity to justify what he did! Shut your mouth, Cicero! Take the oath and get off the rostra!"

  For a long moment there was absolute silence. Of course the senior consul had hoped that the turnout would be large enough to warrant transferring the venue from the Well of the Comitia to the rostra of Castor's temple, but it was not. Atticus had worked to some effect; all those knightly supporters of Cicero were present, and looked to outnumber the opposition. But that Metellus Nepos would veto something as traditional as the outgoing consul's right to speak had not occurred to Cicero. And there could be no way around it, numbers or not. For the second time in a short period, Cicero wished with all his heart that Sulla's law forbidding the tribunician veto was still in effect. But it was not. How then could he say something? Anything? Everything!

  In the end he began to swear his oath according to the age-old formula, then as it concluded: "I also swear that by my single-handed efforts I saved my country, that I, Marcus Tullius Cicero, consul of the Senate and People of Rome, have ensured the maintenance of legal government and preserved Rome from her enemies!"

  Whereupon Atticus began to cheer, and his followers took it up resoundingly. Nor were the young men present to boo and bay; it was New Year's Eve, apparently they had better things to do than watch Cicero relinquish office. Some sort of win, thought Marcus Tullius Cicero as he descended the rostral steps and held out his arms to Atticus. The next thing he was shoulder-high, a wreath of laurel sat on his head, and the crowd chaired him all the way to the Kingmakers' Stairs. A pity Caesar wasn't there to witness it. But, like all the incoming magistrates, Caesar could not attend. Tomorrow was his day, when he and the new magistrates would be sworn into office in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus and begin what (in Caesar's case, anyway) Cicero very much feared would be a calamitous year for the boni.

  The morrow confirmed that foreboding. No sooner was the formal swearing-in ceremony concluded and the calendar adjusted than the new praetor urbanus, Gaius Julius Caesar, left that first meeting of the Senate to hurry to the Well of the Comitia and call the Popular Assembly into session. That it was prearranged was obvious; only those of Popularist view were waiting for him, from the young men to his senatorial adherents and the inevitable throng of men little better than Head Count, relics of all those years in the Subura—skullcapped Jews with the citizenship who with Caesar's connivance had managed to get themselves enrolled in a rural tribe, freedmen, a multitude of small tradesmen and businessmen also inserted into rural tribes, and on the fringes wives and sisters and daughters and aunts.

  The naturally deep voice vanished; Caesar adopted that high, clear tenor tone which carried so well as far as the crowd extended. “People of Rome, I have called you here today to witness my protest against an insult to Rome of such magnitude that the Gods are weeping! Over twenty years ago the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus burned down. In my youth I was flamen Dialis, the special priest of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, and now in my prime I am the Pontifex Maximus, dedicated to the service of the Great God once again. Today I have had to swear my oath of office inside the new premises Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix commissioned Quintus Lutatius Catulus to build eighteen years ago. And, People of Rome, I was ashamed! Ashamed! I abased myself before the Great God, I wept beneath the shelter of my toga praetexta, I could not look up at the face of the Great God's exquisite new statue— commissioned and paid for by my uncle Lucius Aurelius Cotta and his colleague in the consulship, Lucius Manlius Torquatus! Yes, until scant days ago the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus even lacked its effigy of the Great God!"

  Never insignificant even in the midst of the largest crush of people, Caesar now that he was urban praetor seemed nonetheless to have grown both in stature and magnificence; the sheer force which lived within him poured out of him, caught hold of every listener, dominat
ed, enthralled.

  "How can this be?" he asked the crowd. "Why is the guiding spirit of Rome so neglected, so insulted, so denigrated! Why are the temple walls devoid of the greatest art our times can offer? Why are there no gorgeous gifts from foreign kings and princes? Why do Minerva and Juno exist as air, as numina, as nothings? No statue of either one, even in cheap baked clay! Where is the gilt? Where are the golden chariots? Where the glorious moldings, the fabulous floors?"

  He paused, drew a breath, looked like thunder. “I can tell you, Quirites! The money for them resides in Catulus's purse! All the millions of sesterces the Treasury of Rome has supplied to Quintus Lutatius Catulus have never left his personal bank account! I have been to the Treasury and asked for the records, and there are none! None, that is, describing the fate of the many, many sums paid out to Catulus over the years! Sacrilege! That is what it amounts to! The man entrusted with re-creating the house of Jupiter Optimus Maximus in greater beauty and glory than ever before has scuttled off with the funds!"

  The diatribe went on while the audience grew more indignant; what Caesar said was true, hadn't everyone seen it for himself?

  Down from the Capitol came Quintus Lutatius Catulus at a run, followed by Cato, Bibulus and the rest of the boni.

  "There he is!" shouted Caesar, pointing. "Look at him! Oh, the gall! The temerity of the man! However, Quirites, you have to grant him courage, don't you? Look at the barefaced swindler run! How can he move so fast with all that State money dragging him down? Quintus Lutatius Peculatus the embezzler! Embezzler!"

  "What is the meaning of this, praetor urbanus?” Catulus demanded, breathless. "Today is feriae, you can't call a meeting!"

  “As Pontifex Maximus I am at perfect liberty to convene the People to discuss a religious topic at any time on any day! And this is definitely a religious topic. I am explaining to the People why Jupiter Optimus Maximus lacks a fit home, Catulus."