Caesar's Women

by Colleen McCullough

  "Very well," said Caesar then, "what is it to be? Does this body wish to ratify the eastern settlement, or do I take it to the Plebs as leges Vatiniae?"

  "Take it to the Plebs!" cried Bibulus.

  "Take it to the Plebs!" howled Cato.

  When Caesar called for a division, hardly anyone passed to the right; the Senate had decided that any alternative was preferable to giving Caesar his way. Let it go to the Plebs, where it would be shown up for what it was: one piece of arrogance authored by Pompey and another piece of arrogance to be laid at Caesar's door. No one liked being ruled, and Caesar's attitude that day smacked of sovereignty. Better to die than live under another dictator.

  "They didn't like that, and Pompeius is extremely unhappy," said Crassus after what turned out to be a very short meeting.

  "What choice do they give me, Marcus? What ought I to do? Nothing?" Caesar demanded, exasperated.

  "Actually, yes," said the good friend, in no expectation that his words would be heeded. "They know you love to work, they know you love to get things done. Your year is going to degenerate into a duel of wills. They hate being pushed. They hate being told they're a lot of dithering old women. They hate any kind of strength that smacks of excessive authority. It's not your fault you're a born autocrat, Gaius, but what's gradually happening is similar to two rams in a field butting head to head. The boni are your natural enemies. But somehow you're turning the entire House into enemies. I was watching the faces while Lucullus groveled at your feet. He didn't mean to set an example, he's too far gone to be so cunning, but an example he was nevertheless. They were all seeing themselves down there begging your forgiveness, while you stood like a monarch."

  "That's absolute rubbish!"

  "To you, yes. To them, no. If you want my advice, Caesar, then do nothing for the rest of the year. Drop the ratification of the East, and drop the land bill. Sit back and smile, agree with them and lick their arses. Then they might forgive you."

  "I would rather," said Caesar, teeth clenched, "join Lucullus on that dropping in Our Sea than lick their arses!"

  Crassus sighed. "That's what I thought you'd say. In which case, Caesar, be it on your own head."

  "Do you mean to desert me?"

  "No, I'm too good a businessman for that. You mean profits for the business world, which is why you'll get whatever you want from the Assemblies. But you'd better keep an eye on Pompeius, he's more insecure than I am. He wants so badly to belong."

  Thus it was that Publius Vatinius took the ratification of the East to the Plebeian Assembly in a series of laws emerging from an initial general one which consented to Pompey's settlement. The trouble was that the Plebs found this endless legislation very boring after the excitement wore off, and forced Vatinius to be quick. Nor, lacking direction from Caesar (as good as his word—he refused to offer any kind of guidance to Vatinius), did the son of a new Roman citizen from Alba Fucentia understand anything about setting tributes or defining the boundaries of kingdoms. So the Plebs blundered through act after act, consistently setting the tributes too low and defining the boundaries too cloudily. And for their part the boni allowed it all to happen by failing to veto one single aspect of Vatinius's month-long activity. What they wanted was to complain loud and long after it was finished, and use it as an example of what happened when senatorial prerogatives were usurped by the legislating bodies.

  But "Don't come crying to me!" was what Caesar said. “You had your chance, you refused to take it. Complain to the Plebs. Or better still, having resigned from your proper duties, teach the Plebs how to frame treaties and set tributes. It seems they'll be doing it from now on. The precedent has been set."

  All of which paled before the prospect of the vote in the Popular Assembly about Caesar's land bill. Sufficient time and contiones having elapsed, Caesar convoked the voting meeting of the Popular Assembly on the eighteenth day of February, despite the fact that this meant Bibulus held the fasces.

  By now Pompey's hand-picked veterans had all arrived to vote, giving the lex Mia agraria the support it would need to pass. So great was the crowd which assembled that Caesar made no attempt to hold the vote in the Well of the Comitia; he set himself up on the platform attached to the temple of Castor and Pollux, and wasted no time on the preliminaries. With Pompey acting as augur and himself conducting the prayers, he called for the casting of lots to see the order in which the tribes would vote not long after the sun had risen above the Esquiline.

  The moment the men of Cornelia were called to vote first, the boni struck. His fasces-bearing lictors preceding him, Bibulus forced his way through the mass of men around the platform with Cato, Ahenobarbus, Gaius Piso, Favonius and the four tribunes of the plebs he controlled surrounding him, Metellus Scipio in the lead. At the foot of the steps on Pollux's side his lictors stopped; Bibulus pushed past them and stood on the bottom step.

  "Gaius Julius Caesar, you do not possess the fasces!" he screamed. "This meeting is invalid because I, the officiating consul this month, did not consent to its being held! Disband it or I will have you prosecuted!"

  The last word had scarcely left his mouth when the crowd bellowed and surged forward, too quickly for any of the four tribunes of the plebs to interpose a veto, or perhaps too loudly for a veto to be heard. A perfect target, Bibulus was pelted with filth, and when his lictors moved to protect him their sacred persons were seized; bruised and beaten, they had to watch as their fasces were smashed to pieces by a hundred pairs of bare and brawny hands. The same hands then turned to rend Bibulus, slapping rather than punching, with Cato coming in for the same treatment, and the rest retreating. After which someone emptied a huge basket of ordure on top of Bibulus's head, though some was spared for Cato. While the mob howled with laughter, Bibulus, Cato and the lictors withdrew.

  The lex Iulia agraria passed into law so positively that the first eighteen tribes all voted their assent, and the meeting then turned its attention to voting for the men Pompey suggested should fill the commission and the committee. An impeccable collection: among the commissioners were Varro, Caesar's brother-in-law Marcus Atius Balbus, and that great authority on pig breeding Gnaeus Tremellius Scrofa; the five consular committeemen were Pompey, Crassus, Messala Niger, Lucius Caesar and Gaius Cosconius (who was not a consular, but needed to be thanked for his services).

  Convinced they could win after this shocking demonstration of public violence during an illegally convoked meeting, the boni tried the following day to bring Caesar down. Bibulus called the Senate into a closed session and displayed his injuries to the House, together with the bruises and bandages his lictors and Cato sported as they walked slowly up and down the floor to let everyone see what had happened to them.

  "I make no attempt to have Gaius Julius Caesar charged in the Violence Court for conducting a lawless assemblage!" cried Bibulus to the packed gathering. "To do so would be pointless, no one would convict him. What I ask is better and stronger! I want a Senatus Consultum Ultimum! But not in the form invented to deal with Gaius Gracchus! I want a state of emergency declared immediately, with myself appointed Dictator until public violence has been driven from our beloved Forum Romanum, and this mad dog Caesar driven out of Italia forever! I'll have none of a half measure like the one we endured while Catilina occupied Etruria! I want it done the right way, the proper way! Myself as legally elected Dictator, with Marcus Porcius Cato as my master of the horse! Whatever steps are taken then fall to me—no one in this House can be accused of treason, nor can the Dictator be made to answer for what he does or his master of the horse deems necessary. I will see a division!"

  "No doubt you will, Marcus Bibulus," said Caesar, "though I wish you wouldn't. Why embarrass yourself? The House won't give you that kind of mandate unless you manage to grow a few inches. You wouldn't be able to see over the heads of your military escort, though I suppose you could draft dwarves. The only violence which erupted you caused. Nor did a riot develop. The moment the People showed you what they t
hought of your trying to disrupt their legally convened proceedings, the meeting returned to normal and the vote was taken. You were manhandled, but not maimed. The chief insult was a basket of ordure, and that was treatment you richly deserved. The Senate is not sovereign, Marcus Bibulus. The People are sovereign. You tried to destroy that sovereignty in the name of less than five hundred men, most of whom are sitting here today. Most of whom I hope have the sense to deny you your request because it is an unreasonable and baseless request. Rome stands in no danger of civil unrest. Revolution isn't even above the edge of the farthest horizon one can see from the top of the Capitol. You're a spoiled and vindictive little man who wants your own way and can't bear to be gainsaid. As for Marcus Cato, he's a bigger fool than he is a prig. I noted that your other adherents didn't linger yesterday to give you more excuse than this slender pretext on which you demand to be created Dictator. Dictator Bibulus! Ye gods, what a joke! I remember you from Mitylene far too well to blanch at the thought of Dictator Bibulus. You couldn't organize an orgy in Venus Erucina's or a brawl in a tavern. You're an incompetent, vainglorious little maggot! Go ahead, take your division! In fact, I'll move it for you!"

  The eyes so like Sulla's passed from face to face, lingered on Cicero with the ghost of a menace in them not only Cicero felt. What a power the man had! It radiated out of him, and hardly any senator there didn't suddenly understand that what would work on anyone else, even Pompey, would never stop Caesar. If they called his bluff, they all knew it would turn out to be no bluff. He was more than merely dangerous. He was disaster.

  When the division was called, only Cato stood to Bibulus's right; Metellus Scipio and the rest gave in.

  Whereupon Caesar went back to the People and demanded one additional clause for his lex agraria: that every senator be compelled to swear an oath to uphold it the moment it was ratified after the seventeen days' wait was done. There were precedents, including the famous refusal of Metellus Numidicus which had resulted in an exile some years in duration.

  But times had changed and the People were angry; the Senate was seen as deliberately obstructive, and Pompey's veterans wanted their land badly. At first a number of senators refused to swear, but Caesar remained determined, and one by one they swore. Except for Metellus Celer, Cato and Bibulus. After Bibulus crumbled it went down to Celer and Cato, who would not, would not, would not.

  "I suggest," Caesar said to Cicero, "that you persuade that pair to take the oath." He smiled sweetly. "I have permission from the priests and augurs to procure a lex Curiata allowing Publius Clodius to be adopted into the Plebs. So far I haven't implemented it. I hope I never have to. But in the long run, Cicero, it depends on you."

  Terrified, Cicero went to work. "I've seen the Great Man," he said to Celer and Cato, without realizing that he had applied that ironic term to someone other than Pompey, "and he's out to skin you alive if you don't swear."

  "I'd look quite good hanging in the Forum flayed," said Celer.

  "Celer, he'll take everything off you! I mean it! If you don't swear, it means political ruin. There's no punishment attached for refusing to swear, he's not so stupid. No one can say you've done anything particularly admirable in refusing, it won't mean a fine or exile. What it will mean is such odium in the Forum that you won't ever be able to show your face again. If you don't swear, the People will damn you as obstructive for the sake of obstruction. They'll take it personally, not as an insult to Caesar. Bibulus should never have shrieked to an entire meeting of the People that they'd never get the law no matter how badly they wanted it. They interpreted that as spite and malice. It put the boni in a very bad light. Don't you understand that the knights are for it, that it isn't simply Magnus's soldiers?"

  Celer was looking uncertain. "I can't see why the knights are for it," he said sulkily.

  "Because they're busy going round Italia buying up land to sell for a fat profit to the commissioners!" snapped Cicero.

  "They're disgusting!" Cato shouted, speaking for the first time. "I'm the great-grandson of Cato the Censor, I won't bow down to one of these overbred aristocrats! Even if he does have the knights on his side! Rot the knights!"

  Knowing that his dream of concord between the Orders was a thing of the past, Cicero sighed, held out both hands. "Cato, my dear fellow, swear! I see what you mean about the knights, I really do! They want everything their way, and they exert utterly unscrupulous pressures on us. But what can we do? We have to live with them because we can't do without them. How many men are there in the Senate? Certainly not enough to stick one's medicus up in a knightly direction, and that's what refusal means. You'd be offering anal insult to the Ordo Equester, which is far too powerful to tolerate that."

  "I'd rather ride out the storm," said Celer.

  "So would I," said Cato.

  "Grow up!" cried Cicero. "Ride out the storm? You'll sink to the bottom, both of you! Make up your minds to it. Swear and survive, or refuse to swear and accept political ruin." He saw no sign of yielding in either face, girded his loins and went on. "Celer, Cato, swear, I beg of you! After all, what's at stake if you look at it coldly? What's more important, to oblige the Great Man this once in something which doesn't affect you personally, or go down to permanent oblivion? If you kill yourselves politically, you won't be there to continue the fight, will you? Don't you see that it's more important to remain in the arena than get carried out on a shield looking gorgeous in death?"

  And more, and more. Even after Celer came round, it took the beleaguered Cicero another two hours of argument to make the very stubborn Cato give in. But he did give in. Celer and Cato took the oath, and, having taken it, would not forswear it; Caesar had learned from Cinna, and made sure neither man held a stone in his fist to render the swearing void.

  "Oh, what an awful year this is!" Cicero said to Terentia with genuine pain in his voice. "It's like watching a team of giants battering with hammers at a wall too thick to break! If only I wasn't here to see it!"

  She actually patted his hand. "Husband, you look absolutely worn down. Why are you staying? If you do, you'll become ill. Why not set out with me for Antium and Formiae? We could make it a delightful vacation, not return until May or June. Think of the early roses! I know you love to be in Campania for the start of spring. And we could pop in at Arpinum, see how the cheeses and the wool are doing."

  It loomed deliciously before his gaze, but he shook his head. "Oh, Terentia, I'd give anything to go! It just isn't possible. Hybrida is back from Macedonia, and half of Macedonia has come to Rome to accuse him of extortion. The poor fellow was a good colleague in my consulship, no matter what they say. Never gave me any real trouble. So I'm going to defend him. It's the least I can do."

  "Then promise me that the moment your verdict is in, you'll leave," she said. "I'll go on with Tullia and Piso Frugi—Tullia is keen to see the games in Antium. Besides, little Marcus isn't well—he complains so of growing pains that I dread his inheriting my rheumatism. We all need a holiday. Please!"

  Such a novelty was it to hear a beseeching Terentia that Cicero agreed. The moment Hybrida's trial was done, he would join them.

  The problem was that Caesar's forcing him to remonstrate with Celer and Cato was still at the forefront of Cicero's mind when he undertook the defense of Gaius Antonius Hybrida. To have acted as Caesar's lackey smarted; it sat ill with someone whose courage and resolution had saved his country.

  Not therefore so inexplicable that when the moment came to deliver his final speech before the jury found for or against his colleague Hybrida, Cicero found it beyond his control to stick to the subject. He did his habitual good job, lauded Hybrida to the skies and made it clear to the jury that this shining example of the Roman nobility had never pulled the wings off a fly as a child or maimed a considerable number of Greek citizens as a young man, let alone committed any of the crimes alleged by half of the province of Macedonia.

  "Oh," he sighed as he built up to his peroration, "how much I miss the days
when Gaius Hybrida and I were consuls together! What a decent and honorable place Rome was! Yes, we had Catilina skulking in the background ready to demolish our fair city, but he and I coped with that, he and I saved our country! But for what, gentlemen of the jury? For what? I wish I knew! I wish I could tell you why Gaius Hybrida and I stuck by our posts and endured those shocking events! All for nothing, if one looks around Rome on this terrible day during the consulship of a man not fit to wear the toga praetexta! And no, I do not mean the great and good Marcus Bibulus! I mean that ravening wolf Caesar! He has destroyed the concord among the Orders, he has made a mockery of the Senate, he has polluted the consulship! He rubs our noses in the filth which issues from the Cloaca Maxima, he smears it from our tails to our toes, he dumps it on our heads! As soon as this trial is ended I am leaving Rome, and I do not intend to come back for a long time because I just cannot bear to watch Caesar defaecating on Rome! I am going to the seaside, then I am sailing away to see places like Alexandria, haven of learning and good government..."

  The speech ended, the jury voted. CONDEMNO. Gaius Antonius Hybrida was off to exile in Cephallenia, a place he knew well—and that knew him too well. As for Cicero, he packed up and quit Rome that afternoon, Terentia having left already.

  The trial had ended during the morning, and Caesar had been inconspicuously at the back of the crowd to hear Cicero. Before the jury had delivered its verdict he had gone, sending messengers flying in several directions.

  It had been an interesting trial for Caesar in a number of ways, commencing with the fact that he himself had once tried to bring Hybrida down on charges of murder and maiming while the commander of a squadron of Sulla's cavalry at Lake Orchomenus, in Greece. Caesar had also found himself fascinated by the young man prosecuting Hybrida this time, for he was a protégé of Cicero's who now had the courage to face Cicero from the opposite side of the legal fence. Marcus Caelius Rufus, a very handsome and well-set-up fellow who had put together a brilliant case and quite cast Cicero into the shadows.