Caesar's Women

by Colleen McCullough

  Anyway, Atticus, Oppius and some others went to Marcus Crassus and asked him to petition the Senate to cancel the tax-gathering contracts for the East, then instruct the censors to let out new contracts calling for two thirds of the sums originally agreed on. Well, Crassus petitioned. Never so much as dreaming that the boni would—or could!—persuade the whole House to say a resounding NO. But that is what happened. The Senate said a resounding NO.

  At that stage I confess I chuckled; it was such a pleasure to see Marcus Crassus flattened—oh, he was flattened! All that hay wrapped round both horns, yet Crassus the ox stood there stunned and defeated. But then I saw what a stupid move it was on the part of the boni, and stopped chuckling. It seems they have decided it's high time the knights were shown for once and for all that the Senate is supreme, that the Senate runs Rome and the knights can't dictate to it. Well, the Senate may flatter itself that it runs Rome, but you and I know it doesn't. If Rome's businessmen are not allowed to do profitable business, then Rome is finished.

  After the House said NO to Marcus Crassus, the publicani retaliated by refusing to pay the Treasury one sestertius. Oh, what a storm that caused! I daresay the knights hoped this would force the Senate to instruct the censors to cancel the contracts because they weren't being honored—and of course when new tenders were called, the sums tendered would have been much lower. Only the boni control the House, and the House in consequence won't cancel the contracts. It's an impasse.

  The blow to Crassus's standing was colossal, both in the House and among the knights. He's been their spokesman for so long and with such success that it never occurred to him or them that he wouldn't get what he asked for. Particularly as his request to reduce the Asian contracts was so reasonable.

  And who do you think the boni had managed to recruit as their chief spokesman in the House? Why, none other than my ex-brother-in-law, Metellus Celer! For years Celer and his little brother Nepos were my loyalest adherents. But ever since I divorced Mucia they've been my worst enemies. Honestly, Caesar, you'd think that Mucia was the only wife ever divorced in the history of Rome! I had every right to divorce her, didn't I? She was an adultress, spent the time I was away in conducting an affair with Titus Labienus, my own client! What was I supposed to do? Close my eyes and pretend I never heard about it because Mucia's mother is also the mother of Celer and Nepos? Well, I wasn't about to close my eyes. But the way Celer and Nepos carried on, you'd think it was I committed the adultery! Their precious sister divorced? Ye gods, what an intolerable insult!

  They've been making trouble for me ever since. I don't know how they did it, but they've even managed to find another husband for Mucia of sufficiently exalted birth and rank to infer that she was the wronged party! My quaestor Scaurus, if you please. She's old enough to be his mother. Well, almost. He's thirty-four and she's forty-seven. What a match. Though I do think they suit for intelligence, as neither of them has any. I understand Labienus wanted to marry her, but the Brothers Metelli took terrible exception to that idea. So it's Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, who embroiled me in all that business with the Jews. Rumor has it that Mucia is pregnant, another slur on me. I hope she dies having the brat.

  I have a theory as to why the boni have suddenly become so unbelievably obtuse and destructive. The death of Catulus. Once he was gone, the senatorial rump fell totally into the clutches of Bibulus and Cato. Fancy turning up your toes and dying because you weren't asked to speak first or second among the consulars during a House debate! But that's what Catulus did. Leaving his faction to Bibulus and Cato, who don't have his saving grace, namely the ability to distinguish between mere negativity and political suicide.

  I also have a theory as to why Bibulus and Cato turned on Crassus. Catulus left a priesthood vacant, and Cato's brother-in-law Lucius Ahenobarbus wanted it. But Crassus nipped in first and got it for his son, Marcus. A mortal insult to Ahenobarbus, as there isn't a Domitius Ahenobarbus in the College. How picayune. I, by the way, am now an augur. I'm tickled, I can tell you. But I didn't endear myself to Cato, Bibulus or Ahenobarbus in being elected an augur! It was the second election in a very short space of time that Ahenobarbus lost.

  My own affairs—land for my veterans, ratification of my settlements in the East, and so forth—have foundered. It cost me millions to bribe Afranius into the junior consul's chair— money wasted, I can tell you! Afranius has turned out to be a better soldier than he is a politician, but Cicero goes around telling everyone he's a better dancer than he is a politician. This because Afranius got disgustingly drunk at his inauguration banquet on New Year's Day and pirouetted all over Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Embarrassing for me, as everyone knows I bought him the job in an attempt to control Metellus Celer, who as senior consul has walked over Afranius as if he didn't exist.

  When Afranius did manage to have my affairs discussed in the House during February, Celer, Cato and Bibulus among them ruined it. They dragged Lucullus out of his retirement, almost imbecilic with mushrooms and the like, and used him to stall me. Oh, I could kill the lot of them! Every day I wish I hadn't done the right thing and disbanded my army, not to mention paid my troops their share of the spoils while we were still in Asia. Of course that's being criticized too. Cato said it wasn't my place to dole out the spoils minus the consent of the Treasury—that is, the Senate—and when I reminded him that I had an imperium maius empowering me to do just about anything I wanted in Rome's name, he said that my imperium maius had been obtained illegally in the Plebeian Assembly, that it hadn't been bestowed on me by the People. Arrant nonsense, but the House applauded him!

  Then in March the discussion of my affairs ended. Cato put forward a division in the Senate proposing that no business be discussed until the tax-farming problem is solved—and the idiots voted for it! Knowing that Cato was simultaneously blocking any solution to the tax-farming problem! The result is that nothing whatsoever has been discussed. The moment Crassus brings up the tax-farming problem, Cato filibusters. And the Conscript Fathers think Cato is terrific!

  I can't work it out, Caesar, I just can't. What has Cato ever done? He's only thirty-four years old, he's held no senior magistracy, he's a shocking speaker and a prig of the first order. But somewhere along the way the Conscript Fathers have become convinced that he's utterly incorruptible, and that makes him wonderful. Why can't they see that incorruptibility is disastrous when it's allied to a mentality like Cato's? As for Bibulus—well, he's incorruptible too, they say. And both never cease to prate that they're the avowed enemies of all men who stand one fraction of an inch higher than their peers. A laudable objective. Except that some men simply can't help standing higher than their peers because they're better. If we were all meant to be equal, we'd all be created exactly the same. We're not, and that's a fact there's no getting around.

  Whichever way I turn, Caesar, I'm howled at by a pack of enemies. Don't the fools understand that my army might be disbanded, yet its members are right here in Italia? All I have to do is stamp my foot for soldiers to spring up eager to do my bidding. I can tell you, I am sorely tempted. I conquered the East, I just about doubled Rome's income, and I did everything the right way. So why are they against me?

  Anyway, enough of me and my troubles. This letter is really to warn you that you're in for trouble too.

  It all started with those terrific reports you keep sending to the Senate—a perfect campaign against the Lusitani and the Callaici; heaps of gold and treasures; proper disposition of the province's resources and functions; the mines producing more silver, lead and iron than in half a century; relief for the towns Metellus Pius punished—the boni must have spent a fortune sending spies to Further Spain to catch you out. But they haven't caught you out, and rumor says they never will. Not a whiff of extortion or peculation anywhere near your vicinity, buckets of letters from grateful residents of Further Spain, the guilty punished and the innocent exonerated. Old Mamercus Princeps Senatus—he's failing badly, by the way—got up in the House and said that you
r conduct as governor had provided a manual of gubernatorial conduct, and the boni couldn't refute a word of what he said. How that hurt!

  All of Rome knows you'll be senior consul. Even if we leave aside the fact that you always come in at the top of the polls, your popularity is growing in leaps and bounds. Marcus Crassus is going around telling every knight in the Eighteen that when you're senior consul the tax-farming business will soon be sotted out. From which I gather that he knows he's going to need your services—and knows he'll get them.

  Well, I need your services too, Caesar. Far more than Marcus Crassus does! All he has at stake is his damaged clout, whereas I need land for my veterans and treaties ratifying my settlements in the East.

  There's a good chance of course that you're already on your way home—Cicero certainly seems to think so—but my bones tell me you're like me, prone to stay until the very last moment so that every thread is woven into place and every tangle combed away.

  The boni have just struck, Caesar, and extremely cunning they have been. All candidates for the consular elections have to declare themselves by the Nones of June at the latest, even though the elections will not take place until the usual five days before the Ides of Quinctilis. Egged on by Celer, Gaius Piso, Bibulus (a candidate himself, of course, but safely inside Rome because he's like Cicero, never wants to govern a province) and the rest of the boni, Cato succeeded in passing a consultum putting the closing date at the Nones of June. Over five nundinae before the elections instead of the three nundinae custom and tradition have laid down.

  Someone must have whispered that you travel like the wind, because they then produced another ploy to frustrate you—this one in case you arrive in Rome before the Nones of June. Celer asked the House to set a date for your triumph. Very affable he was, full of praise for the splendid job you've done as governor. After which he suggested that the date of your triumph be set as the Ides of June! Everyone thought that a splendid idea, so the motion was carried. Yes, you are to triumph eight days later than the closing of the consular candidates' booth. Wonderful, eh?

  So, Caesar, if you do manage to reach Rome before the Nones of June, you will have to petition the Senate to run for consul in absentia. You can't cross the pomerium into the city to lodge your candidacy in person without giving up your imperium and thereby your right to triumph. I add that Celer was very careful to point out to the House that Cicero had passed a law forbidding consular candidates to stand in absentia. A gentle reminder I took to mean that the boni intend to oppose your petition to run in absentia. They have got you by the balls, just as you said—with perfect truth!—they've got me. I will be working to persuade our senatorial sheep—why do they let themselves be led by a mere handful of men who are not even anything special?—to have you allowed to stand in absentia. So will Crassus, Mamercus Princeps Senatus and many others, I know.

  The main thing is to get to Rome before the Nones of June. Ye gods, can you, even if the winds blow my hired ship to Gades in record time? What I'm hoping is that you're already well on your way down the Via Domitia. I've sent a messenger to meet you if you are, just in case you're dawdling.

  You have to make it, Caesar! I need you desperately, and I am not ashamed to say so. You've hauled me out of boiling water before in a way which preserved the legalities. All I can say is that if you're not on hand to help me this time, I might have to stamp my foot. I don't want to do that. If I did, I'd go down in the history books as no better than Sulla. Look how everyone hates him. It's really uncomfortable to be hated, though Sulla never seemed to mind.

  Pompey's letter reached Gades on the twenty-first day of May, a remarkably swift passage. And Caesar happened to be in Gades to receive it.

  "It's fifteen hundred miles by road from Gades to Rome," he said to Lucius Cornelius Balbus Major, "which means I can't get to Rome by the Nones of June even if I average a hundred miles a day. Rot the boni!"

  "No man can average a hundred miles a day," said the little Gadetanian banker, looking anxious.

  "I can in a fast gig harnessed to four good mules, provided I can change teams often enough," Caesar said calmly. "However, the road isn't feasible. It will have to be Rome by ship."

  "The season is wrong. Magnus's letter proves that. Five days in front of a northeasterly gale."

  "Ah, Balbus, but I have luck!"

  Caesar did indeed have luck, Balbus reflected. No matter how badly matters appeared to have gone wrong, somehow that magical—and it was magical—luck came to his rescue. Though he seemed to manufacture it himself out of sheer willpower. As if, having made up his mind, he could compel natural and unnatural forces to obey him. The past year and more had been the most exhilarating, the most stimulating experience of Balbus's entire life, toiling and panting in Caesar's wake from one end of Spain to the other. Who could ever have thought he would sail before an Atlantic Ocean wind in pursuit of foes convinced they had eluded the reach of Rome? But they hadn't. Out came the ships from Olisippo, down came the legions. Then more voyages to remote Brigantium, untold treasures, a people feeling for the first time a wind of change, an influence from the Middle Sea that would never again go away. What did Caesar say? It wasn't the gold, it was the lengthening of Rome's reach. What did they have, that small race from a little city on the Italian salt route? Why was it they who swept all before them? Not like a gigantic wave, more like a millstone grinding patiently, patiently at whatever was thrown down as grist. They never gave up, the Romans.

  "And what will Caesar's luck consist of this time?"

  "To begin with, one myoparo. Two teams of the best oarsmen Gades can furnish. No baggage and no animals. As passengers, just you and me and Burgundus. And a strong sou'wester," said Caesar, grinning.

  "A piddling order," said Balbus without answering that smile. He rarely smiled; Gadetanian bankers of impeccably Phoenician lineage were not prompted to take life or circumstances lightly. Balbus looked what he was, a subtle, placid man of extraordinary intelligence and ability.

  Caesar was already halfway to the door. "I'm off to find the right myoparo. Your job is to find me a pilot capable of navigating out of sight of land. We're going the direct route—through the Pillars of Hercules, a stop for food and water at New Carthage, then Balearis Minor. From there we head directly for the strait between Sardinia and Corsica. We have a thousand miles of water to cover, and we can't hope for the kind of winds which blew Magnus's letter here in five days. We have twelve days."

  "Something over eighty miles between sunrise and sunrise. Not so piddling," said Balbus, rising to his feet.

  "But possible, provided there are no adverse winds. Trust to my luck and the Gods, Balbus! I shall make magnificent offerings to the Lares Permarini and Goddess Fortuna. They'll listen to me."

  The Gods listened, though how Caesar managed to squeeze all that he did into five short hours before he set sail from Gades was more than Balbus could fathom. Caesar's quaestor was a most efficient young man who swung with enormous enthusiasm into organizing the shipping of the governor's possessions along the land route from Spain to Rome, the Via Domitia; the booty had long gone, accompanied by the single legion Caesar had chosen to march with him in his triumphal parade. Somewhat to his surprise, the Senate had acceded to his request for a triumph without a murmur from the boni, but that mystery was fully explained in Pompey's letter. No reason to refuse what they had every intention of making sure would be a dismal affair. Dismal it would be. His troops were due to arrive on the Campus Martius by the Ides of June— an ironic twist, given that Celer had assigned that day for the triumph. Were Caesar allowed to run for consul in absentia and the triumph went ahead, it would be a poor triumph indeed. Weary soldiers, no time to manufacture sumptuous floats and displays, booty thrown higgledy-piggledy into wagons. Not the sort of triumph Caesar had bargained for. However, getting to Rome before the Nones of June was the first problem. Pray for a stiff sou'wester!

  And indeed the winds did blow out of the southwest, though the
y were gentle rather than stiff. A very slight following sea helped the oarsmen, as did a small push from the sail, but it was backbreaking work almost all the way. Caesar and Burgundus rowed a full shift of three hours four times in each sunrise to sunrise, which appealed to the professional oarsmen as much as Caesar's cheerful friendliness did. The bonus would be worth it, so they put their shoulders to the task and rowed while Balbus and the pilot busied themselves bearing amphorae of water weakly flavored with a good fortified Spanish wine to those who called for it.

  When the pilot brought the myoparo into sight of the Italian coast and there in front of them was the mouth of the Tiber, the crew shouted themselves hoarse, then paired up on each oar and sprinted the trim little monoreme into Ostia Harbor; the voyage had taken twelve days, and the port attained two hours after dawn on the third day of June.

  Leaving Balbus and Burgundus to reward the myoparo pilot and oarsmen, Caesar threw himself across a good hired horse and rode for Rome at the gallop. His journey would end on the Campus Martius, but not his travail; he would have to find someone to hurry into the city and locate Pompey. A conscious decision which would not please Crassus, yet the correct decision. Pompey was right. He needed Caesar more than Crassus did. Besides which, Crassus was an old friend; he would settle down once matters were explained.